How to commemorate a life, 70 years after it began? I have been thinking that the answer is to celebrate the anniversary of the day you were born, a day we are all very happy for, much the way we'd celebrate it if you were still alive, but with the edges of sadness and loneliness for you that now mingle with the rest. We shared photos and songs and memories and you seemed to respond: through radio stations playing your favorite tunes, Natalie telling Michelle about your birthday party in heaven, the deer Maggie called Mom out to see or the one (perhaps the same) who came to see her at the church, the photo of our family that always shifts a bit in the frame of my bedroom mirror whenever something momentous is happening, falling to the floor, or the joke James told tonight...It's still your birthday today, but without your presence, and all of these things, whether they are a comfort of the mind or spirit or heaven, helped us to celebrate you today. Your life has become magic, after only 70 years. (atp)
