The love between a parent and a child is unbreakable. Years and distance can make people lose touch, but that does not mean the love diminishes. For better or worse, folks try to live with the good memories embedded in their souls as a way to move forward, hoping and praying that one day they can reunite with their loved ones.
Lani Szarmach was separated from her daughters following the divorce from her husband.
Jeanine Toomay and Starla Medlock were just one and two years old, respectively, when the divorce took place. It would be the last time they would get to see their mother. Lani later remarried her current husband Mark Szarmach but she still missed her babies.
Lani Szarmach / Facebook
John Thompson joined the Air Force when he was 18 years old. Due to his career, he moved several times.
He met Lani in Thailand, fell in love, and married. After the divorce, however, he relocated back to the United States with his daughters. He had full custody of the girls.
Mark Szarmach / Facebook
The women admit their father who died six years ago, never spoke ill of Lani.
"He just said that she couldn’t speak English because she’s full-blooded Thai, and he said she thought since we were American and he was in the military, he could take better care of us and provide us a better life than she could," Starla told ABC News.
Jeannie Toomay / Facebook
Still, Jeanine and Starla felt a void in their hearts.
For years they tried finding their mother without any success. "We thought, ‘We can’t keep doing this anymore. We can’t keep doing this to ourselves. We have to accept that we’ll probably never meet her.' It was a chapter in our life that was never going to be finished," Starla admits.
ABC News
On December 30, 2016, Starla received a Facebook message. Mark Szarmach, Lani's hubby, reached out starting his message with "This is not a prank."
"There’s a picture I see of this family, and I see mine and Jeannie’s baby picture. I’m laying in bed and my husband’s laying next to me and I’m going, ‘Oh my God,'" says Starla. Lani and her husband live in Pueblo, Colorado. "Lani wanted to find them but she didn’t know how to and because she had such limited information there weren’t any diligent searches," Mark explains. "But she’s often cried herself to sleep and talked about her daughters and how she has to find them someday. That night she asked me to help her find them, and we jotted down the information we had."
EmoticonEmoticon