How Lost Puzzle Pieces Found Each Other

     My nephew had been adopted at birth and happily raised on a Midwest farm. But his unknown roots tugged at him. When he launched the search for his biological parents as a young adult, he learned they hadn’t stayed together, and his father had died.     His mother? Not a trace of her.
     Now twenty-seven-years old, he was about to get married. Driving down the interstate one day, his phone jangled. A call from Denver. A number he didn’t recognize.
     He picked it up, thinking it was my husband and me, who planned to attend his wedding. No one there. So he called the number. “Hey,” he said.
   “You know who I am?” The woman’s voice spoke with hesitation.
     “Ah, no.”
     “I’m your mother.”
     The tectonic plates in his world shifted.
     Just as hers had when she’d cried out to God, asking for news of the son she’d relinquished at birth. The son she’d never held. A week later she heard from a relative half way around the world who had her son’s phone number from his search years ago.
     More phone calls followed between mother and son. Then nineteen days after his wedding, he and his bride flew to Denver. My husband and I drove them across town to his mother’s home.
     He knocked at the door.
     A dog barked from inside.
   His mother appeared. The same rich complexion as his. The same jet-black hair. The same piercing eyes. The same wide smile. Both wearing sunglasses propped on their heads. They embraced - their first embrace - and a holy silence filled the room.
     “I never thought this would happen,” she whispered, still in his arms.
     “Me neither.” His voice was quiet, then he regained control. “And this is my wife and my aunt and uncle.”
     She ushered her son and his bride to another room. “I got you something for your wedding. It’s not much.”
     He opened the package in pink paper. The first gift he’d held from his mother.
​     My husband and I made a quick exit, leaving mother, son, and bride to sift through emotions that spanned decades. As we walked to the car, we held hands, awestruck in the miracle of witnessing missing puzzle pieces snap into place in the mural of two lives.