My Neice Kim Called

Kim is my brother's daughter from his first marriage. The other day she called to tell me she'd just heard from my step mom that Barbara has passed away and how sorry she was to hear the news. She also told me how touched she was those many years ago when we helped her out. That thats the reason she called me once in a while to say hello and to keep in touch.

We were on the phone for almost an hour talking about many different things. She is living in North Carolina, is married to a medic in the army and has two children. Her husband is assigned to and infantry company in the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq. He is home right now on R&R for two weeks. I talked to him for a while and we exchanged stories about each others army service. He's very interested in knowing more about my time in Vietnam so I'm giving him my Vietnam Story blog url. He's going to share it with guys in his unit, because he's sure they would all be interested in reading about it too.

Kim had a tough time growing up. She has cancer when she was nine and was in trouble a lot in her teens. They finally had to put her in a place for problem teen girls. While she was there, she called me asked me to bring her some things she needed. She told us that no one was visiting her, not even her mom, step father or my brother, who is her father. I told her we would be there on visiting day, which was Saturday.

Barbara and I went shopping before we went and picked her up some toiletries and a few things to wear. We went back each weekend to visit her until she was released. Her mother had come once or twice, but never my brother. After she was released, she stayed with a girl friend. We picked her up one afternoon and took her shopping for clothes. She hardly had anything so we bought her quite a bit. We didn't hear from her for about a year.

When she did call, she asked me to help her out again. Gave me a sob story about how she was didn't have any money and needed our help again. She was bouncing around from place to place and couldn't keep a job. This time I wasn't so generous. We figured she was just trying to take advantage of our generosity,

It was several years before she called again. I could tell by her voice that she was a very different girl than the one I'd spoken to years earlier. She told me she was working at a dinner as a waitress near were my brother lived. She asked me if Barbara and I would come there for dinner one evening so she could visit with us. We agreed and went there a few days later.

She was so happy to see us and gave us big hugs and couldn't stop thanking us for all we did for her when she was having trouble. Her coworkers all told us how highly she spoke of us. We had a good visit and left feeling a lot better about helping her out.

Every once and a while over the years I'd get a call from Kim. One time she called to tell me she had gotten married, twice to tell me she had a baby. Each time she asked me to call her dad and ask him to call her. He usually did and even visited her off and on over the years too. I never understood why he didn't see here more often. They only lived about 20 minutes a part. Now that she's living in North Carolina, who knows when hell see her again.