Lost and Profound
Written by: Katherine Gloede
A lot of times, a sign from your loved one can be subtle, but I think my dad knew that for analytical lawyer types such as myself, the signs pretty much needed to smack me in the face, and boy did they.
A few months after my father, Ben Plominski, passed away, I decided to guilt trip my husband into going to the doctor and getting his health in order. He reluctantly agreed. He had the same primary care provider as my father, who dutifully performed a series of tests, and ultimately wrote on a prescription notepad information for a small personal training gym that he recommended. He emphasized that after years of not working out, my husband was not in adequate enough shape for group classes yet.
So, reluctantly my husband made an appointment to go. Around the same time, he had started a new stressful job and was on calls all the time. He was constantly pacing around taking these work calls, and that April day in 2022 was no different. He was finishing up a work call outside of the gym, waiting for his very first personal training session, and pacing around when he noticed something shiny on the ground. It looked to be an engagement ring. He picked it up and brought it into the studio. He immediately handed it over to the young man working behind the desk, said I found this in the parking lot and went about his workout. The young man took the ring and put it in the desk drawer. On the car ride on the way home, he texted me a photo of what he found (photo attached). I asked what he did with it, and when he said he left it with the guy at the front desk, I asked him to turn around and bring it home. He agreed so long as I agreed to handle it... all of it. I agreed. It was a distraction during a difficult time. Was it real? How did it end up in the parking lot? How should I try to find the owner? Who is the owner? What happens if I can't find the owner? There was no handbook on such a thing.
Long story short, after about 6 weeks, we found the owner of the ring. The ring was in the parking lot sharing three businesses. We thought the owner must have been a member of the gym, taking off the ring for a work out, so we made sure to follow up there frequently. We also stopped by to the other businesses, a brewery, and trampoline park. Each time, the employees were confused and unhelpful--they didn't understand why someone was reporting that they had found something, as opposed to lost something. We finally found the owner during the third contact with the trampoline park, located about 50 feet from where the ring was located. That third employee remembered that someone had stopped in a few weeks earlier inquiring about a lost ring, and still had her contact information.
From there, that's where the smacks from heaven come into play.
Losing and having someone return a valuable engagement ring is pretty rare in and of itself, but it doesn't stop there.
The owner of the ring, Diana Himmelstein, received the ring from her deceased mother whose name was Hope.
Hope died of the very same rare brain cancer, glioblastoma, that had just taken my father. Only 13,000 people in this country are diagnosed with that cancer each year and most die in that first year.
Diane's last name Himmel-stein literally means "Heaven" and "Stone" in German. I know that because my grief counselor, who is German, told me so.
And so there you have it.... smacks from heaven. Lots of them.
My neighbor is an actuary. I told him what happened. His mind started to spin... the statistical probability of it all was astounding. I can't help but agree. It is rare to even meet someone who knows what glioblastoma is.
Fathers know their daughters best, and my dad knew how to communicate with me. It scares me when I think I could have missed the signs. But somehow I managed to put the pieces of the puzzle together. These signs brought me a tremendous amount of peace. Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers, here and passed, and who continue to bless us with their wisdom and guidance.
Full story from the Whitney Reynolds Show
