Mimi Fery
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Workers cleaning beach debris on Long Island after Hurricane Sandy discovered a heartbreaking message in a bottle penned by a child who died years ago — and delivered it to her grateful mom.
“Be excellent to yourself, dude!” then-10-year-old Sidonie Fery wrote on a scrap of paper before tossing the green plastic ginger-ale bottle into Great South Bay 12 years ago.
Sidonie died in a fall from a cliff in Switzerland in 2010 at the age of 18, filling her mom’s heart with grief.
Through all the years, the bottle drifted only a couple miles west before washing up on the shore in Patchogue, where workers opened it and read the note.
On it was the family’s New York City phone number, which they used to contact her mom, Mimi Fery.
“I was just sobbing when I heard they had found it,” Fery said. “These are very, very kind people.”
Fery said she knew immediately the message was from her child because it’s like a line from her favorite movie, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
She is taking the message as a sign not to worry about her daughter — that she’s doing fine, wherever she may be.
“Be excellent to yourself, dude,” Fery said, quoting the message.
“It makes so much sense.”