Train ride to the Purple Heart necklace

A young lady named Rissa who’s in her early to mid 30’s goes to her local coffee shop every morning and orders her favorite drink and gets her danish and while she is at the coffee shop she reads her local newspaper before heading off to work. As she is reading the newspaper she stumbles upon a man’s story and that was just released from prison under good behavior and he was recently found alive by a young girl and her mother at a junk yard. While Rissa is reading the newspaper she had to stop and check the time and hurried on to her work where she is a local journalist and is interested in uncovering this man’s story. She goes on to tell her supervisor of how much she is interested in interviewing the man that was just recently found and attempts to encourage her supervisor to allow her to take lead on this particular case. Her supervisor is in disbelief and confused on why she wants to interview this man so abruptly and informs the young lady that they will think about it and let her know as the day goes on. As the day goes on Rissa’s supervisor still confused but goes on to allow Rissa to interview the man and informs her that as soon as something is not right that she MUST pull back from the story immediately. Rissa was filled with so much joy and excitement and agrees to pull back as soon as something does not feel right, and goes on to tell her other co-workers, family, and friends of the big story that she’s able to write about. Although Rissa’s boss is still not thrilled on this particular story and is continuing to allow Rissa to take lead in order for her to prove herself to the team by showing her what her full potential can look like if she stays on course.

Rissa has had a few days to process this major story that she is about to discover and wants to be published for others to read and be proud of the interview that she is looking forward to having. She gathers as much information as she could to try and track this man down so she can have a sit down talk with him and she tries to get clues to better assist her in finding him sooner. Luckily, she goes to the junk yard where he was found alive and he was still there just shaking and crying. Rissa introduces herself and explains why she is there to the man and he responds saying “Hello, my name is Ron”. Rissa responds with “nice to meet you Ron are you ready for us to begin the interview if its no trouble to you”? Ron was eager to share his story to Rissa and begins to start sharing his story as Rissa sits and takes notes.

It all starts with me driving trucks for a living Rissa, Ron states. Ron goes on to share his driving for trucks got him caught up in trouble because the company that he worked was a part of an underground human trafficking trade. He goes on

to sharing that he found out that the group of girls that he was supposed to collect were from his daughters school and he was not going to do that and so he ended up getting set up and taken to prison he confessed and got 20 years to life. His daughter was 10 years old at the time that he went to prison and she should be around 30 years old now because he knew that he would be getting released by the time she turned 30 years old. Rissa asked Ron where she is now and why he’s not with her. Ron answered Rissa with so much despair and grief and stated “she died when she was 20 in a car accident, from what I was just recently told”. Rissa responded with such sadness in her tone and provided Ron with her condolences. Ron was thankful and continued on with his story of mentioning that while he was in prison he had a tough time with depression and anxiety and guilt for missing his daughters life but ultimately he is happy that he made the decision to not continue on with committing crimes and the sad part is while in prison he developed onset dementia. His goal was to get released from prison and reside with his daughter as that was all he had left in his life to remember. He received a letter from her months ago telling him to meet her at the train station and she would be wearing this particular purple heart necklace he got for her before he went to prison as a goodbye gift.

Inside this particular purple heart necklace he put a message that reads: HOLD THIS CLOSE TO YOUR HEART AND YOU WILL SEE ME. He shares with Rissa that it was for his daughter to read every time she feels alone and scared because he had to go to prison where she ended up going to live with her grandmother (my mother he shared with Rissa) who raised her, and she passed away when his daughter turned 18 years old, so she had to quickly find employment and work hard to get herself a little house. She even was able to come see me one time but it was a very short visit and right after that she passes away, Ron shares with Rissa.

Rissa is showing sadness within her eyes and Ron continues to go on with his story. I had no idea that my little Angel was gone at this time, I just assumed she didn’t want to continue to see me suffer in a jail any longer, Ron shares. As soon as he was released from prison Ron goes on, he gets on a train to go see his daughter unknowingly of what has transpired he goes to her house and goes up to the door and notices a family is there and they open the door and shares with Ron that they moved in 10 years ago and they had heard that the owner before named Pat passed away. There was an older lady that was next door watering her bushes overheard the conversation and asked Ron what he was inquiring about and Ron had informed her that he was looking for his daughter and he told her that he guessed he was wrong and didn’t live at that address and they had just said that the previous owner passed away that lived here, he shares with Rissa and he had so much confusion and was very distraught at this particular moment. The older lady remembers the previous owner and describes her in great detail and then includes her name as Patricia but goes by Pat, and he states that he immediately breaks down in tears and says “that’s my baby, and can’t understand why or how this has happened especially since he’s received a letter just a few months ago he thought for a moment that this is not the case, this didn’t happen, she must’ve moved away”. But then the lady goes into her house and comes back out to show Ron the paper with her obituary on it and says “I’m so sorry I knew she had a father in prison serving for a long time I didn’t know how to contact you and I was very close with her and she was such a sweet girl” she then offered her condolences to Ron and asked if he wanted to come in and have some tea.

The old lady invited him in for a cup of tea, Ron shares with Rissa. He also shares with her that the old lady became aware of him having some sort of onset dementia. He continues to talk to her by telling her stories and having such a great talk with her and as its getting much later and the sunset is setting the old lady offers him a night in the living room but he doesn’t want to bother her so he goes back to the train station and sits there in disbelief. As its getting colder in the city at the train station he sees a bunch of old cardboard boxes and he notices that there was quite a bit of old blankets and chairs and cardboard boxes and thought he could use them in order to make himself a small fort on the ground, so he did. Little did he know that in the morning that stuff was set to be scooped up by the garbage man. He has a hard time hearing with his onset dementia and fell asleep hard that night and the trash men were there to pick up the trash early in the morning he was scooped up and knocked unconscious as they continued to scoop up the trash. He was taken to the local junk yard. He states and that is why I am here now Rissa but here’s where it gets interesting.

While he was knocked unconscious he falls into a deep dream that felt like reality. Ron goes on to share what the dream was about. He wakes up on a train and the train is going somewhere but it doesn’t look like its going to stop, then he gets up and while doing so he notices that the floor is see through but then goes back to normal and falls quickly to the floor and is asked by a nearby man if he is OK. He responds saying “yeah, did you see that I can see the tracks”? The man says “yeah when I look out the window I can see the tracks too” as the man looks with such confusion. The same man who was standing alongside his wife asks are you OK sir? Ron says that he’s just headed to see his daughter. I don’t know when the next stop will be. “They said that they just had a stop sir and that it’ll be another one coming soon”, the man standing with his wife says. Ron sits back down and starts to look around and notices that all the people have a fake smile on the back of their heads. Then he notices that the windows look different. He reaches to touch the window and realizes that the windows are gummy windows that you can literally stick your finger all the way through the window.

He can’t believe that this is real so he asks the man and his wife that was nearby about the windows being squishy and gummy like and then they inform him there is a “gum factory right there, sir”. The couple seemed really worried about the man and asked somebody to come speak with him. An attendant came to the scene and asked him if he was all right and he said “No”, and that he wasn’t alright and while he is talking to the attendant he feels his face and realized that there was blood pouring from his nose and asked the wife if he was bleeding and she said “no your not sir and is everything okay? You are scaring me”. He then began to start screaming hysterically and wants to just run off of the train and everyone who is on it is scared but also encourages Ron to stay where he is and to let the train make its next stop so that he can get off. The train continues to keep going and Ron is becoming agitated once more and starts to hyperventilate and luckily the married man is a professional doctor and encourages him to keep his hope up of seeing his daughter and gets him to breathe normally and remembers why he is on the train to begin with.

Ron wakes up to find himself underground buried alive all he can hear are faint sounds of machinery. While being buried underground he heard a voice saying “wait for us dear”. To his imagination there are people nearby and he can hear and he starts shouting. There was a little girl that was there with her mother and father but the father had walked up ahead to get into the car due to the little girl losing a very important necklace that she cherished. The little girl and her mother continued to search for this important necklace in this particular section that the junk man had informed them to look near and then they stumbled upon a paper bag right above where Ron was buried alive, they begin to hear the man whimpering and hollering. The little girl and her mother began to call for help and as they started to dig they had seen Ron’s foot and were able to take him out as they were digging him out the little girl had put the necklace on and she looked up at him and he saw her.

He started crying and reached for her and called out his daughters name this put fright in the little girl and her family couldn’t understand what was going on he went to the hospital and later asked for these people so that he could thank them for finding him. The hospital agreed to contact the family and was able to make contact with them and they agreed to come and see him at the hospital. When the family got there they spoke with him and he pointed out the necklace the girl is wearing and asked her where she got the necklace. She informed him that she had got it at a yard sale off eighth street in the local area. He responded saying that that was where his daughter used to live. He said she passed away 10 years ago and the mother of the little girl said “it was about 10 years ago when I went to that yard sale and got that necklace for my daughter and I just gave it to my daughter one her birthday just this year”. So the mother asked Ron if his daughter had a necklace that was similar to the one her daughter had on. Ron stated “if you bought it off eighth street at the yard sale 10 years ago I can promise you that it was hers.” He asked to see the necklace and he said let me show you something he pulled out a little roll of piece of paper that would have been wedged into the necklace and it read “HOLD THIS CLOSE TO YOUR HEART AND YOU WILL SEE ME”. He explained to the family what he had went through in his life and what the necklace had meant to his daughter and also to him. He cried and could not believe that it was his daughters necklace on the girl that had found him. He held the necklace close to his heart and took a big gasp of air and went back into the coma where he returned to the train and he woke up where he was buried alive years ago and that was his story he went on to tell Rissa. Rissa was so thrilled to capture this mans story to where once he finished he passed away right in the junk yard where he was found. So not only did Rissa walk away with a story she was able to contact 911 to come and get the man the proper burial that he needed. Rissa’s story became a hit in the office to where it was published and at the train station they honored Ron for being a committed father and a committed customer to the train station that he used to ride on all the time.

20 years had passed and now the little girl that found Ron was 30 years old she happed to ride the same train that Ron would take and while riding the train she had on the necklace that she received as a gift from her mother, one little girl approached her about 10 years old and asked her where did you find a beautiful necklace like that? “So let me tell you about this man who woke up on a train searching for his daughter”, she goes on to tell his story.

THE END