Dear Mom,

Happy Birthday.  Today we would be celebrating your 65th.  It's a beautiful late summer early fall day that would be perfect for happy hour on your deck and one of your melt in my mouth pork roasts.  I know you would have been most pleased with a simple family dinner.  Filled up you would have been to have the people closest to you gathered around your table.  Yesterday we would have gone out for lunch with the girls.  No fanfare or hoopla necessary.  You knew what was important in life, and what's more...you absolutely cherished it.

To say that I miss you, doesn't adequately explain the vacancy in my heart.  It's not dramatic to call it a hole. A black hole even with every negative association with the word black applicable: starless, somber, shadowy.  That murky void isn't the only thing I'm left with though.  I also have decades worth of life, love, laughs and lessons all of which I now cherish. You taught me some of the most important truths that I try to live my life by.

You weren't perfect, but that's probably what I loved most about you.  You were real...authentic...true.  I have a few souls left in my life that I'd describe just the same way.  You would too.  They have been such a lifeline during the past five years I've spent coming to terms with your absence in my life.

Absence is a rather absolute word I must admit.  After all,  our relationship hasn't ended...it has changed.  That's frustrating at times.  Like last week when I received correspondence involving your estate long ago settled.  I felt like it was a message, a sign.  So sure was I that I went straight away to buy lottery tickets using the policy numbers involved.  No win.  No surprise.  Some disappointment.  Mostly over the mixed message not the nonexistent windfall.  A sign rightly received would have been the lottery won.

You see I look for missives from you all the time.  I know I see them sometimes when it is just coincidence or chance, but what if?  I was so certain that at last night's owl prowl we would see another great horned owl like the one I saw on the same preserve in broad daylight just days after your death.  Truth be told, I got my hopes up high.  Real high.  I held it in my heart that if we saw an owl, it would be a sign.  Not a manifestation, but a token wink.

About a half hour into our hike as the sun was setting and before the moon was arise, Miss Bit asked me if I would be sad if we didn't see an owl.  I lied to my daughter.  I said no when my answer was yes.  Not but a minute later we heard a lone and distant hoot calling not once, but twice from the conifer canopy along the northern ravine ridge.  It was the herald I was seeking.  The whole group doubled back closer to the spot from which the horned owl called, but I stopped straining to hear.  I already had my shout out.

So thanks Mom for still being there for me when I really need you.  I feel your presence when I quiet my mind and open my heart and stop trying so dang hard.  I wish we could celebrate with you today in flesh and blood, but mind and spirit will have to do.  You are always in my heart and I love you,

Krissy