A Wish for Ashley

I had a feeling I shouldn’t do it, but I scrolled down and read the comments that some Tribune readers posted in response to yesterday’s story.  Many were as sweet and encouraging as all the emails I’ve received in the past 24 hours.  A few were… not so much.  I knew that strangers who don’t know me or my family and don’t know the circumstances might question our motives. I expected this.  I didn’t expect the anger that I felt after reading those comments.  

I can only speak for myself- not for my mom, sisters, and brother.  For those that question why now are we searching, I just want to correct that for me, “now” has been always.  The first time I thought to search for Ashley I was a freshman in high school.  I had just learned how to use the internet- I was light years behind my peers who had screen names and all kinds of messenger programs I had never heard of- I was fourteen.  It was three years after the Dept. of Social Services decided not to place Ashley with my family and cut off our contact with her.  For three years I had been thinking constantly about where Ash might be and how she might be doing.  I was a kid. But I was old enough to understand that foster homes did not provide the greatest homelife.  I was aware enough to know that my missing Ashley everyday for three years was not a feeling that was going to go away anytime soon.  So I got myself my first screenname and started searching profiles.  I was fourteen. I naively and adamantly believed that I would find Ashley quickly and that with a couple of IMs we would re-establish the relationship we had shared just a short while before.  We would have figured out why in the world they moved her and cut off my family’s contact.  We would make up for lost time and grow up as best friends.  I was fifteen when I realized: our happy ending was nowhere near.

I kept searching.  Once I got through the AIM profiles I moved to public records. I learned how to use altavista- the search engine of choice back then- and searched every combination of her first middle and last names along with “Lowell” “born in February” and “foster care.”  There were many hits.  Never the one I was waiting for.  I graduated from high school having no doubt logged 1000 hours of Ashley search time.  I graduated from high school, and there was no way to invite Ash to my graduation.  

In college I got rid of my naivety.  I knew I shouldn’t think that tomorrow would be the day.  But I couldn’t let her go.  Anyone who knows me knows I don’t let many people in.  I have few friends, but those who are my friends are friends for life.  I don’t always agree with my family, but I will support and cheer my family members with all I have in me.  Ashley has always been my family. My little sister.  I couldn’t let her go.  I kept searching.  My junior year in college I had a hit.  Ashley Marie Cesenas.  It was a missing child’s poster.  The girl was bi-racial and born in February.  I saw the picture and thought, her face is rounder, but her features are similar.  Maybe.  I kept on searching for this Ashley… and then found the police report that this missing girl was found murdered.  My roommate came home to find me in my room sobbing.  It was the first time I told anyone Ashley’s story.  She looked at the pictures I had of Ashley at age 7 and looked at the poster… and remarked that they looked very, very similar.  I was inconsolable.  The next morning she called the local police department listed on the missing poster and asked if they could her give any information on the deceased Ashley Marie Cesenas.  The officer told her he couldn’t.  She pleaded with him to just confirm or deny that the girl was born in Massachusetts.  He took pity on her- heard my sobs in the background- and said that no, this girl was born in Texas.  My Ashley was ok.  But it was the first time I accepted that my search may not have a happy ending.

When I graduated from college and came home I kept in the habit of searching for Ashley.  She turned 18 that year and I felt a renewed sense of hope knowing that now, legally as an adult, she may be more easily tracked down.  That’s when I started with the phone records searches and making hundreds of phone calls.  Will came back into our lives a month later.  He wasn’t the reason I was searching.  He never was.  But as I got to know him again, as an adult, and truly understand the incredible transformation he had made from the days I had seen him when I was a kid, I developed the greatest respect for him.

The article says he didn’t say Ashley’s name until 5 days before he died.  This is true.  However, he talked about her all the time.  To me, and only to me.  Will was a private person.  He battled his feelings of guilt.  He fought us for loving him. He didn’t think he was worthy of that love.  I knew otherwise.  I wanted him to know that I wasn’t just saying I was happy he moved in just to say it, and that when I said 'I love you' I meant it.  But I’m not a vocal person.  I’m a writer.  So I wrote him a letter.  About everything.  In response, he locked his door for three days and didn’t let anyone in.  Too much too soon, I thought.  He’s just getting to know us again and I brought all the pain from his past back.  I kicked myself for leaving that letter on the pillow.  But when he finally unlocked his door, I heard him call my name.  I went in, closed the door, and sat on his bed.  That night was the first of hundreds of our ‘bed conversations.’  

Our bed conversations were always conversations about Ashley.  He never said her name, but the ‘she’ was always obvious.  Will told me how hard it was when he first moved in for him to see me, because I reminded him so much of her.  He talked about his regrets, his dreams of her, his all consuming guilt.  I didn’t tell him he shouldn’t say those things.  I just listened.  It was what he needed.  For him to open up to me in this way was huge.  To know he thought so much of me to pick me to listen… it was what I needed.  We took turns as to who was the talker and who was the listener.  During bed conversations I went from understanding him to be one man to truly knowing him as my best friend.  Yes, he messed up.  He lost Ashley.  He disappeared.  But he came back.  He came back and changed all of our lives in a way I could have never imagined.  

As Will’s cancer spread, I stepped up my efforts to find Ashley.  Not for him, as the article says.   But just to present her with the opportunity to question, to put on trial, this man who changed the trajectory of her life.  I felt that she should have a chance to meet the man who gave her life.  If Will had known I was calling hundreds of Ashleys at the time in the hopes of surprising him one day, he probably would have killed me.  I didn’t care. I was searching to give Ashley the choice.  I was chancing Will never talking to me again. Locking that door for his final days.  I kept making calls.

That last day that he was conscious in the hospice house, I replaced my mom and sat in the chair to take my shift of watching over him.  He startled me when he woke up.  I knew how many pain medications the nurses were giving him, and didn’t expect that he would wake for hours.  That was the day he said her name.  He said it to me and asked me to find her because we had been talking about her all along.  He said it to me… because I think he knew that I had been up to things for a while.

A Wish for Ashley has been 10 years in the making.  I started this project at age fourteen.  Blindly optimistic, supremely naïve.  I continue this project now at age twenty-four.  Trying to maintain my optimism. No longer possessing any of that naivety.  A part of me died when I was eleven and told that they had moved my cousin and I would not be able to see her again.  Another part fell away when I registered that my search could have a very unhappy ending.  A huge piece of my heart went numb on June 1st when I lost my best friend, my only tangible link to my other sister.   A Wish for Ashley, yes, was Will’s wish.  But selfishly, it is my own.  I can’t let her go.  Not until I know she’s ok.  People can write all they want and, I know, I need to be ok with that.  In my heart I know that I have been trying my hardest for years to bring back my little sister.  Ashley, I know you’re not so little anymore.  Neither am I.  But please just let me know you’re ok.  If you want to leave after that, only then will I finally let go.  

I love you.

Audra