Is it wrong to hope on the anniversary of her death?

It's been 38 years since Dottye died.

I've only known for 7 and like so often with death, it feels like I have known forever and at the same time like I just found out.

One of the things that was hard to gasp was the fact that when I found out that she had died, I had already out lived her.

It took a long time to not envision her at her time of death, to not imagine the grotesque things that happened to her body in that crash.

I was not at peace with her death for a long time, and I can only thank Allison Dubois for helping me to find peace.

I thought, my sister and I as well as other family members wondered, did she commit suicide?

In my heart I wondered as my brain tried to convince myself that she would never have put strangers in harm as she tried to end her own life.

We knew she had a tortured soul, and I wondered often.

It only took one phone call with Allison to know in my heart as well as my mind that this was an accident. 

She may have had times where she wanted to die, but she ended up dying alone on the side of the road and that wasn't something that she planned.

Is it wrong to be so full of hope on this the day of her death?

An article ran in the Columbus Dispatch written by Joe Blundo.

The phone conversation with Mr. Blundo was relaxed and easy. Though as I hung up the phone I noticed how much I was sweating so I must have been nervous without mentally noticing it.

That article is in the paper today, the Sunday paper.

This the 38th anniversary of her reported death.

I have had a lot of hits to my website already, many from the Columbus area.

I am hopeful that someone will contact me who remembers her.

Maybe it seems wrong, but even without that hope I am grateful that in my own small way I was able to make a tribute in the form of a reported news article to my first mother.

The mother I will always feel a connection to; the mother I who I believe never got to hold me.

The mother whom I sometimes say "I never got to meet" but in reality, in my reality, is with me each day.

As my connections to some people fade, I find that my search for truth is building a connection within myself that I never had before.

Maybe that will be my answers when all is said and done?

Maybe my search is for myself, for a part of me I am still to find.

I'm not sure if she is resting in peace, I do think she is.

Maybe my digging would have upset her in life.

I believe though that as she watches me work at it, she is smiling down knowing that she is the center of my attention.

She liked to be noticed.

Click here to see the story by Joe Blundo on my search for people who Remember Dottye in the Columbus Dispatch.