A Daughter's Song

Tomorrow is your birthday. I find myself immensely relieved that it will be a busy day for me. It will be a travel day, full of all the hustle and bustle travel always entails. Maybe I won't have time to stop and think of you and how much I miss you. Maybe I won't remember those last days and hours and wonder what if. Maybe I won't recall all those birthday celebrations, all those times you told us that we had done too much, or those occasions we knew how very much you loved having your family around you.

This year has been a year of firsts, and not the firsts for which I might long. My first New Year's without you, my first Mother's Day without you, our first Father's Day, Daddy's first birthday.....the list seems endless. I am so glad I won't be here to experience this next, and possibly hardest first ..... your birthday.

Even as I am away, it will indeed be another and inescapable first..... a vacation when you aren't checking on us and fretting about us the entire time we travel. We are flying out of the country on your birthday, and this trip will be without your never fail parting instruction, "Be sure to call me as soon as you are there." Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't....I would give anything if I could call you this year just to say, "We are here and safe. We are okay."

We continue to wear our brave smiles. We press on with our busy lives. Rarely a day passes that there is not a memory trigger for something you said or did. And those triggers still occur in the oddest of circumstances and the most surprising of times. They devastate me. At the same time I pray they will never stop. One of life's oxymorons, I suppose.

Do you know how I feel when I slip into your Lilly dress altered to fit me just so I might wear something that was yours? Or that I cry when I wash things that were yours because I know I am losing those last lingering traces of your scent.....Elizabeth Taylor's Passion, I believe? Do you see my eyes well up with emotion each time Kate wears one of your necklaces, the ones your daughters chose for mine? Do you know my smart phone contacts still read 'Grandmommy and Pop', not just 'Pop'? Do you see that tears have become an ever present ingredient in my peach cobbler because it's your recipe I make and love best? And no, Mother, mine is still not as good as yours always was. Do you know that I have not yet been able to make the frozen pink salad you loved so much, the one Daddy learned to do so that you could have it anytime you wanted instead of just on holidays and other special occasions? Do you know what I'm really thinking when I stop for a moment at your grave?

Have you seen your father, My Granddaddy Griggs? Have you found Aunt Gail and your mother? Have you seen my precious Olivia? Have you met Sharon's mom? Have you seen your Republican hero Ronald Reagan? I have so many questions, and frighteningly few answers.

Things will never be the same. I will never be the same. I do not so easily take for granted things I once did.

I never believed we were losing you, Mother. Why didn't you tell us you were leaving, that your fight was ending? I think you knew, so why didn't you let us say a proper good-bye? Why didn't you give me a chance to say those things that now I wish I had?

It is easier, but it's not. It is better, but only sometimes. We are moving on, but not completely. This week-end, as was often the case for your birthdays, Daddy bought you flowers. But this year, your blooms and greenery grace the FBC Sunday sanctuary in your memory. Daddy is here. Your girls are here. You should be here. You should be here for your precious Matt's graduation from Wake and for the first wedding of a grandchild. You should be here when your great grandchildren arrive. You should be here for your birthday. You should be here for our trip.

You were such a worrier if any of the three of us were travelling. I can recall you so often saying, "I can relax now. My girls are all home."

I know you still watch over us. You must know how much we miss you. There were moments, many moments in fact, when I was so frustrated with you I could not stand it. Now, I would love to have just one more of those moments. I will have to find a degree of comfort in knowing this year it is you who are safe and "at home." On this your birthday, I do hope there is frozen pink salad in heaven.