A Priceless Life

Dru stares at the faded blue ink of her pen, showing its wear by the chewed tip and the name of a bank that has been defunct for years, as she crosses off the date on the stick-on, dashboard calendar. Underneath the date of October 15th, written with the same, crusty, blue pen were the words “24th birthday.”

She drops the pen into the cupholder of her 1996 Pontiac TranSport minivan, which was covered in more rust than its original seaweed green paint. Dru turns the rearview mirror toward her, to reveal a small-faced, blond-haired young woman with deep blue eyes that reveal a glimmer of adventure, along with a hint of loneliness she couldn’t quite hide even with the brightest smile.

“Happy Birthday,” she says to herself as she studies her reflection like she would an old friend - if she had one.

Druscilla Parker is her given name, but she prefers to call herself Dru. She was left to the Foster Care system when she was about four years old by her parents who didn’t see themselves fit to raise her.

She bounced around from one foster family to another. None of them wanted to keep her around. Maybe it was because she was so quiet or maybe she didn’t try hard enough. Although she always yearned for connection and found great value in relationships, Dru never felt like forcing a conversation and false sense of family if that depth genuinely wasn’t there - which it never was. She didn’t give up immediately, but once she saw there was no hope, she substituted real relationships with those in the pages of books, where the characters became her friends and family.

When Dru turned eighteen, she moved to a small town where rent was cheap, worked at the local library, and through reading, received all the education she needed in a variety of subjects. Through reading, the next lesson was always at her fingertips. She spent her nights after work discovering the world and its wonders. This was truly what lit her soul on fire. The dreams she had about meeting people from all around the world, learning their ways, and experiencing the magic within other cultures were what she lived and saved for. Writing a book of her own travels and having it on the shelves of libraries just like the one she worked at filled her heart with hope and yearning.

On her 24th birthday, she still had the same dreams of adventure she had at eighteen, but after six years of saving, she was still nowhere close to having the money she needed to make her dreams a reality. Year after year, unfulfilled dreams took the sparkle out of her eyes.

However, every year on her birthday, she made a promise to herself to spend a little of her hard-earned money on something small to brighten her day. This year she decided to go to one of her favorite antique malls to find something special. She always loved antique malls because similar to the books she’s immersed herself in, everything in these places has a story and connection to something - to someone.

Dru parks close to the main door and enters the mall and walks past the cashier, beginning her journey to find the perfect birthday gift for herself.

She moves throughout the store, from floor to floor, room to room. She passes antique dresses, hats, toys, trinkets, dinnerware, and other treasures of the past. She picks up and marvels at a few along the way, but nothing is quite right.

Finding herself back on the first floor of the shop, she sees a sign above a doorway that says, “More Finds in the Basement.” Dru walks down the dimly lit stairwell and when she reaches the bottom finds a maze of small rooms and vignettes. She curiously makes her way through the maze, until she reaches a darkened corner and what looks like an old bank vault.

She peeks inside the vault and finds a dim light turned on to reveal four walls lined in bookshelves and hundreds of books, most of which have worn cloth or leather spines in a variety of faded colors. The shelf on the wall across from the vault door has a marker labeled “Historic Books.” Dru, feeling she’s in the right place, scans the titles of the books, waiting for something to catch her eye.

She finally sits down on the far end of a small wooden bench in the center of the room, with her back facing the vault door. A book on the shelf directly in front of her catches her eye - because it doesn’t really look like a book. It is small, black, and has no title etched into its spine - only dates. Dru pulls it from the shelf and sits back down on the bench. The cover of the book is blank and the spine reads January 12th, 2013 - January 13th, 2013. “Historic?”

She flips open the front cover of the book to see the name “Agnes Martin” written in beautiful cursive on the inside cover, accompanied by what must be her address and the number 85.

Fascinated, Dru turns to the next page. She realizes what she is reading is a journal, mistaken for a book, and this is where Agnes’s story begins - or ends.

The date is written in the top corner - January 13th, 2013, just as the spine of the diary suggested. The first line of this entry states, “I believe today will be the last day of my life, and at 97, I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset about it. After all, I’ve lived a very full life, for which I’m incredibly thankful. Of course, there are a few things I wish I would have experienced on this journey…”. Captivated, Dru reads on to discover that Agnes was born in 1916, in the midst of World War I. Her father was fighting overseas, where he was unfortunately killed, and her mother died giving birth to Agnes - making her an orphan. She further explained that she was almost adopted at age thirteen, but her prospective parents backed out because of the Great Depression. However, they still gave her an adoption gift - a journal. That’s when she started writing and kept a detailed record of each year of her life. This journal that Dru is reading, is the 85th and last journal she kept and appears to summarize all of the wonders and challenges Agnes has experienced throughout her life.

Agnes lived in the Foster Care system too, but never stayed long with a family - because she knew that when she turned eighteen, all she wanted to do was leave. She wanted to see the world, which was not acceptable back then. It didn’t matter to her though, she did what she wanted to - and boy, she did a lot and saw everything.

She became close and practiced meditation with gurus in India, trekked through waterfalls in Iceland, climbed Machu Picchu, and afterward had drinks with those she met at the top and remained close with them for years. Agnes had countless daunting and daring experiences. She did charitable work in twelve different countries, stayed in Scotland training and caring for sled dogs, and learned how to live off of the land in Ireland. She fell in love twice. Once was with a man who aspired to be a playwright in New York, but it was the passionate, lustful kind of love that would never last. The second was with a man from Turkey, a truly successful, hardworking man who knew how to have fun, and genuinely wanted to take care of her. He wanted to get married, but Agnes, too afraid, ran away.

This was one of her biggest regrets - letting him go. She was never married. Had no kids or extended family. Although she knew many from all around the world that she loved and created a bond with, she never laid down roots. She was on a constant adventure, never calling anywhere home until she was eighty-five and settled in one place, which is where she wrote the last twelve journals of her life.

On the last page of the journal, Agnes mentions that one day she will write a book of her adventures and has stored her other journals in a safe place within the floors of her home so they wouldn’t be disturbed.

Dru closes the journal and searches for the others in the vault. There are no more journals to be found. She purchases the book as her birthday present to herself and disappointedly leaves the mall. Dru sits in her car, thinking about everything she just read in Agnes’s journal, and decides to drive to the address in Agnes’ journal, which is a half hour away. The other journals could still be there hidden within the floor. She felt she had finally found a friend worth getting to know better and she desperately wanted to read journals 1-84.

Dru drives the distance to the next town over, thinking about how she is going to make her way into the house; what story she will tell to gain access. She eventually pulls up to a deteriorating house that looks as if no one had cared for it in years and to her good fortune also looks abandoned.

Dru hesitantly made her way up the stairs to the door, which was hanging desolately by one hinge. She pulled it open carefully and stepped inside. The house was mostly empty and a little creepy and sad. She began to walk through the house, room by room. searching for what looked like a good storage place.

Then, as she had almost given up, Dru walked into a room with a map of the world covering the wall with push pins indicating every place Agnes had assumedly ever been. Dru ran her fingers across them all in admiration, until one came loose and fell to the floor. She immediately rushed to pick it up, but the pin rolled across the floor and into a small knot in the floorboards. Upon closer inspection, Dru sees that it is a metal ring, which she pulls on to lift a door revealing a space under the floorboards.

Dru peers through the hole in the floor and discovers that protected within the floorboards, are the remainder of the journals, stacked neatly in a row.

In search of the first journal that Agnes recorded, Dru takes out the other journals, one by one and sets them beside her in numerical order on the dusty ground. Suddenly something slips out from one, and to Dru’s surprise, it’s a one hundred dollar bill. Dru begins to leaf through the pages of the other journals, and more money falls to the floor beside her.

Dru counted twenty thousand dollars in total!

Two years later:

Dru found herself staring through the window of the local bookstore in wonder at what had happened in her life since she found Agnes’s journal. She admired one title, in particular, that was on display - “Memoirs of Agnes,” by Dru Parker.

Dru had written Agnes’s story and had fulfilled her dream - both of their dreams. The book had turned into a best-seller and in turn, Dru had become a best-selling author. She had turned the money over to the state and they gave it back to her to use for publishing expenses.

Her success had allowed Dru to travel the world and make her own cherished memories - and learn from those lessons left behind by a new and dear friend. It all began with a bond over a dream and a love of life and words, and it became a reality that would change the lives of two friends who never met, but knew each other better than anyone ever could. Who could ask for a better birthday present?