The second part of my series “The Lost Kids” is out this week.

The day before the story came out, a Facebook friend across the country posted a really beautiful quote from “A Prayer for Owen Meaney” by John Irving.

I found it an odd coincidence.

The story of Cynthia Clark Harvey’s struggle to get her mentally ill daughter help has haunted me for years. I finally decided this fall that I could disclose the conflict of interest that was keeping me from writing about Erica (Cynthia and I have been in writing classes and groups together) and help her mother get the message out about how dangerous wilderness-therapy camps can be.

Erica died during a hike on her very first day at one of those camps in 2002.  

When we sat down for a formal interview, Cynthia mentioned that in the months preceeding Erica’s death, she had often read to Erica at night when she couldn’t sleep. One of the books she read to her was “A Prayer for Owen Meaney.”

Here’s the quote my FB friend posted. I don’t even know the woman well enough to ask why she posted it. But I’m glad she did.

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time – the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes – when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever – there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

I hate to admit that motherhood (particularly, mothering Sophie) has changed how I approach telling other people’s stories, but it has. I don’t know that it made this story any better from the reader’s perspective, but it cut me to the quick, telling this one.

Niki Varlotta is quite a mom. As much as I asked her about her son Alex, in the two-plus years I followed her family, she wanted to know all about Sophie, too. She didn’t have to ask — she’s just that kind of person. She wanted to know. She really cares. We talked about other stuff, too. Books, music. About our “typical” kids and how having “special” siblings — so different and yet unified by their differentness — affects them, for both good and bad.

I’ll miss her. And yet, I’m terrified she’ll call — to share the next scary chapter of her family’s story. I hope I don’t hear from Niki, save a Christmas card or a book recommendation.

That family deserves a happy ending.

It is pretty juicy, according to an LA Times blog.

I have my own thoughts about Sarah Palin, which I expressed last year (was it only a year ago?) in Phoenix New Times. My feelings haven’t changed. I don’t know if Levi Johnston’s telling the truth, but since all’s game in love and politics, the Vanity Fair piece will at least be worth a read. (Interesting that he was reportedly paid for writing it. I wonder how much is really in his own words?)

I still blame John McCain for the whole Palin thing, but that’s me.

Whether Johnston’s telling the truth or not (and my guess is that it’s shades of gray, as is much of life) I can say one thing definitively: Sarah Palin is no poster mom of a kid with Down syndrome. Not on my wall, anyway.

“And Sophie has never liked The Wiggles,” I exclaimed, at the end of a diatribe about the short shelf life of this group. More blank stares.

OK, so maybe New Times wasn’t the right venue for the piece. But hey, as you’ll learn, it wasn’t my idea….