It had been another wonderful day for Mary. And in reality the end of another busy but exciting week. As the director of counseling and suicide prevention center Mary had just this week alone successfully talked a number of people out of committing suicide. She had won a number of civic awards and her office was filled with little mementos she had received from grateful family members and those she had counseled. She saved each little memento because they each represented a life given a second chance. In fact 60 Minutes had even done a story about her.

But it was Friday and her wonderful husband Frank was taking her on a romantic getaway for the weekend. She always loved it when Frank would surprise her like this. Even after 25 years of marriage Frank was still treating her like when they were first dating. Their pact of love was always being rekindled anew. With so many of her friends having problems she couldn't help but think theirs was like a Storybook Marriage. Frank had his own successful business and life couldn't be better.

Their son Frank Jr. had received a football scholarship and was the star of his team. In fact he was even considered a frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy.

Their daughter was a high school senior, on the honor role and had even been elected Home Coming Queen.

She thought about her parents, they had just celebrated their 50th Wedding anniversary and currently were on a cruise in Hawaii. She thought about how healthy they both were and able to enjoy life at their age.

But it hadn't always been this Storybook perfect for Mary. In fact as a child growing up it was just the opposite. Her family had been poor and she remembered how it hurt when she overheard the other kids, making fun of her clothes.

While her father wasn't mean to her she felt somewhat neglected. She had always thought he drank and smoked too much and often wished he would quit.

Her mother worked as a cleaning lady to help make ends meet. Mary knew this was hard on her but her mother's lack of education prevented her from getting something better.

Mary had vowed to herself that she would have a better life than her parents so her kids wouldn't have to go through the hardships that she had to endure.

Mary's family wasn't regular attendees of church, but Mary would often lay in bed at night praying that if God could hear her that she and her family needed a miracle. And then one day it happened, a day that would forever change her life for the better. She remembered one of her school mates Helen, inviting her and her entire family to a special weeknight gathering at their church. It seemed a very special speaker would be there. She remembered how surprised she was when her father agreed to go.

She remembered how things had really changed in her family in the weeks and months following this service. The wonderful people in that church had really reached out to her family and the miracle she had so often prayed for was actually becoming a reality.

It was shortly after that – that she also met Frank. She couldn't believe that the most popular boy in school was actually interested in her. Not only was Frank captain of the football team but was also president of the school academic honor society.

Mary was living a dream and here it was years later and she thought how lucky she was to still be living that Storybook dream. Growing up she used to dream of being Cinderella, but she never expected that it would actually happen to her. No this sort of thing only happens in the movies she used to tell herself.

But now her mind had come back to the present, and she was busy packing. Frank would be home soon and she was looking forward to a wonderful weekend together.

An extremely frantic old lady had just been admitted. She had kept repeating this wild story and her daughter was very worried she was going to have a stroke or heart attack so she had brought her into the hospital. She was so upset that she had already been sedated. Dr. Collins had learned this from the nurses station when he phoned in, but he was also told that it was quite urgent that he speak to the old women's daughter. What he would hear next he would never forget for the rest of his life.

He invited the women's daughter into his office and asked her to explain what was going on. She begin telling this incredulous story: It seemed about 6 weeks ago her mother started having these vivid dreams, which lately had grown to the point of being vivid nightmares. Her mother had described them as being so vivid it was like watching a video.

Each night the dream was exactly the same except with added details. The day before bringing her mother (named Helen) in, she had recorded her telling this incredible story which she then begin to play for the doctor:

The dream keeps taking her back to when she was young and she remembers a poor girl at her school named Mary. She remembers how the other girls at school used to tease and make fun of Mary. But what was most amazing was that in the Dream she could see two parallel universes. In each universe she could see Mary side by side. It was like watching two separate videos of Mary's life. Except each video was drastically different.

In the one video Mary's life was full of heartache and sorrow. Forced to quit school early because she had gotten pregnant with her first son. She later married this boy and they also had a daughter. But the marriage soon turned sour. They stayed together for a number of years but her husband drank too much and was always being fired from jobs. Mary worked as a store clerk but they were still poor. Mary's dream of a wonderful life with a wonderful man never materialized.

In the one dream Mary was just getting over the death of both her parents. Her father had finally died of lung cancer after years of smoking and shortly after that her mother had succumbed quickly to breast cancer.

But there was some hope in Mary's life. At least her children looked like they may have a promising future. Her son Frank Jr. was the star of his High School football team. In fact he was being highly recruited by a number of collages. And her daughter Susan was quite pretty and smart. But she often worried about the two of them. With her husband half drunk all the time her kids often hung out with some unsavory friends.

And then one fateful night she received a terrible call from the police. It seemed that her son and daughter had been involved in a terrible crash. She remembered the police mentioning something about alcohol being involved but she was more interested in the status of her two children. It seemed that Susan hadn't been wearing a seat belt and had been thrown through the windshield. Paul it seemed had been paralyzed from the waist down.

Paul never did recover mentally from being paralyzed and his football career over. He took his own life with a bullet two years later. Susan herself became very distraught that her once beautiful face was now so horribly disfigured. She became hooked on the pain medication the doctors had given her in the hospital. Upon leaving the hospital she looked for any drug that would help ease her predicament.

Mary became very concerned when Susan had run away from home 6 months earlier. But nothing could prepare her for “the kick in the Teeth” she would receive when the Police showed up in her driveway to say they had found her daughter Susan dead of an apparent drug overdose.

Soon after this her husband Frank left her and was living out of the state with another woman. At this point Mary just lost it. She had totally freaked out on her job and had been taken into the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Here Mary continued to go further into a silent shell and was soon committed to the State Psychiatric hospital.

Many years had passed when Mary greatly surprised the doctors by abruptly starting to speak again. But instead of normal conversation it was as if Mary was living in a dream world. She was always smiling now and talking to invisible people around her. In these conversations with herself she was always talking about her wonderful family. Her son Frank Bennett Jr. had just won the Heisman Trophy as the best collage football player. Her daughter Susan had just been elected Home Coming Queen and her parents had just recently gone on a cruise to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

Everything in her life was perfect and soon her wonderful husband Frank would be home to take her away for a romantic weekend getaway.

Dr. Collins was floored at this point because he vividly remembered having several years earlier as an intern visiting this particular hospital to study this patient named Mary. At the time they had all diagnosed her condition as just living in a mental dream fantasy to escape her painful existence.

Then Helen's daughter related her mother's other parallel dream about Mary. – In this dream Mary had indeed been poor growing up but some event had occurred to send her life off in a completely different direction. In this dream Mary's life was exactly like the Cinderella story with the happy ending that Dr. Collins had heard the old woman Mary relate several years earlier in the hospital. In fact it was so eerily similar that Dr. Collins even found himself correctly anticipating each new point of the story.

But the point that had finally driven her mother (Helen) over the edge for which she was right now in the hospital was when she saw in the event that had caused the two different parallel dreams. For Mary it was the life that was and the life that should have been.

Many years ago as it turned out her mother (Helen) was a classmate of Mary's. One day she had intended to invite Mary and her family to this meeting at her church.

You say wait a minute, their was never a Heisman Trophy winner named Frank Bennett Jr. Of course not – Helen "chickened" out at the last minute and never invited Mary.

Each new day is a new opportunity to share our talents with those around us.