\u201cWe got busy with our lives, until we somehow lost touch,\u201d Margaret said. <\/p>\n
Kathy hadn\u2019t given up entirely. After moving to Auckland from Suva, she went looking for her old friend. She had no luck. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I migrated to NZ, I had been looking for her, but I wasn\u2019t looking in the right places,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The breakthrough came out of nowhere. <\/p>\n
Members of the Auckland Garden Club dropped by Arvida Parklane, one of more than 30 Arvida Group retirement villages nationwide, a couple of months ago for a look through the residents\u2019 gardens. <\/p>\n
One of the visitors had a connection with Kathy. A photo went out to confirm it really was her and a phone number followed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for the Auckland Garden Club visiting, we probably would never have met,\u201d Margaret said. \u201cIt was our village that sort of brought us together.\u201d <\/p>\n
The pair spoke on the phone first. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very exciting. We had a long chat over the phone for over an hour,\u201d Kathy said. <\/p>\n
Last week, more than half a century since they\u2019d last seen each other, Kathy visited Arvida Parklane in person, while her daughter was in town. They had lunch at the village restaurant and didn\u2019t leave for hours. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had about three and a half hours together. We just chatted,\u201d Margaret said. <\/p>\n
They went through old photos from Kathy\u2019s years in Fiji. They filled in the gaps \u2013 families, careers, five decades of catching up. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a small world,\u201d Kathy said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI never expected it to happen, but amazingly it did.\u201d <\/p>\n
They\u2019re not planning on losing touch again. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve both got a phone number, so we can chat to one another,\u201d Margaret said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe got busy with our lives, until we somehow lost touch,\u201d Margaret said. Kathy hadn\u2019t given up entirely.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[83636,287065,74,51,1558,18836,2566,2082,71,8589,5838,6093,11556,8732,111,139,69,22497,74012,126529,26849,213,66557,102,1354,1530],"class_list":["post-583108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-83636","tag-53year","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-been","tag-club","tag-fiji","tag-for","tag-from","tag-garden","tag-help","tag-little","tag-losing","tag-mystery","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pal","tag-pen","tag-reunites","tag-solved","tag-sports","tag-touch","tag-with","tag-woman","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}