Merrie Carol called last week. We had not spoken for a long time, 12 years at least.

Our point of contact was a missing lovebird named Sweetheart.

Back then, the newspaper ran classified ads for people whose pets had gone astray or who had found a cat or a rabbit and wanted animals and owners reunited. I read them from time to time to see if a lost could be linked to a found.

Merrie Carol’s ad ran day after day. So I wrote a story about her and her mother searching their neighborhood, calling “Sweetheart, Sweetheart.”

 A few weeks later, a family who had adopted Sweetheart when he flew onto their lanai brought him back.

The reason Merrie Carol telephoned was to tell me that Sweetheart had died. She thought I’d like to know. What I didn’t tell her was that even though we hadn’t talked since then, I thought of her whenever I drove past her house, which was almost every working day. Her absolute delight in recovering her bird was my reward.

There are many people like that, people who tap lightly into our lives but whose forces remain spirited even in absence, even through time. Mr. Higuchi was one of them.

Mr. Higuchi, a friend of my dad’s, grew the most beautiful mangos, with skins blushing peach to tawny yellow.

They were creamy, luscious mangoes, but for all their splendor, it was Mr. Higuchi’s pure joy in sharing them — evident when he brought them to my door the few times my parents weren’t home when he came by — that was the blessing.

There was also the other path through which came pleasure. My mother, whose artistic sense had her smiling and marveling at the colors and shapes, would announce their arrival. We’d stand on the porch turning each ovoid beauty in appreciation.

After her death, it was my father who brought them over, continuing the link woven through the fruit until Mr. Higuchi himself died this fall.

Shortly before I wrote about Merrie Carol and Sweetheart, I found myself in a deep gloom. A conflict at work had me questioning a career I thought had been successful and the support of co-workers I had counted on had disappeared.

In that state, I sat outside the old news building, just watching people come and go. Then, through the parking lot swirled a woman, her dark curling locks trailing from the scarf tied around them.

She worked at the competition so we knew each other only to say hello. She waved as she usually did and was about to walk into the building when she stopped and looked at me for a second.

 Gathering her skirt around her, she plopped on the bench next to me and began to talk.

She didn’t ask what might be wrong. She simply told me about her day, how she had had a nice, but hurried lunch with a friend, about how she had eaten too much as she always did when she rushed a meal, about traffic and the heat, about her plans for the weekend.

She didn’t give me advice nor false sympathy. She just talked, her ebullience sweeping away misery.

Mary Kaye passed from this world earlier this month. I didn’t know her well, but her touch of light stays with me. It will shine brightly in the universe of kindness for all time.

I give thanks.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.