I checked it again, this time with a greater interest. My mind raced, not in circles, but in all directions imaginable. Something wasn’t correct. Was this a map that shows something else, something different?

Pictures, images appeared and reappeared capturing a life that ended long ago-but yet somehow here it seemed in a moment that they were calling me, guiding me to them.

I looked up away from the map to recenter myself and all I see is vast blankness; all those that stood with me in celebration were no longer…present.

“What is happening?” I asked myself.

I dropped my head back down to it-my mind still not off the track of the unknown path.

A glint in its center shone like a bright star in the night sky and they re-appeared again, their image. Only this time, followed by writing; ‘Follow the map to the path and you will find us-we have never left.’

Could it be? How? They left me many years ago and now they live? My parents!