Someone emailed me to say he’d found my dad’s West Point diploma behind a photo in a frame he bought at a 2nd hand store. Sure enough, dad’s diploma is missing from the tube where we’ve “carefully" kept it for years. It’s on its way home. Very happy for the kindness of strangers.

It made my mother’s day. She’s been struggling with having had to put my dad into the nursing facility, where she can’t see him (even though it’s in the same building). So she was happy to have this “good news” and thinks it’s auspicious because it’s Army-Navy gameday. :)

He either framed it & then later added a photo over it, or tried to “protect it” more recently during some cognitive struggles. My parents dissolved their household quickly (in 2016) after my dad had a major stroke. The frame/photo was either sold at the estate sale or donated.

Here’s the carefully preserved tube. My dad had written “keep this” on the tube during the era where he labeled everything in his home. But somehow it was missing its diploma.

Was able to FaceTime successfully w/ my dad for the first time in a few weeks (he’s often incoherent, but not today). I told him the diploma story and he was definitely intrigued — as happy as one can be to be getting back a diploma he didn’t know he’d lost. Today was a good day.

He’s had a tough few months. Broken vertebrae, surgery, and now stuck in a nursing facility and unable to see my mom. Unlikely to get back home unless it’s for hospice care. He doesn’t have many good days left, but this one was good. (I gave him all the Twitter messages too.)