Happy Birthday, Mom

I woke up this morning thinking of you and longing to know more about you.

That longing stayed with me throughout the day. I found myself looking through old photographs, hoping they might spark a memory or two, or perhaps reveal something I had forgotten. In my search for memories of you, I realized how few pictures I actually have.

There is the portrait Dad had transferred onto a silk screen while he was in Korea, and several photographs of you as a child and a much younger woman. I kept searching because I wanted to see you as the woman I remember from the last years of your life—a woman closer to the age I am now.

But no matter how many albums and boxes I searched through, I couldn’t find a single photograph from those years.

As I sat with that realization, I felt sadness rise in me. And if I’m honest, a little anger too. Not just at the lack of photographs, but at the reality that I lost you when I was still so young.

You’ve been gone for almost thirty-eight years. Nearly two-thirds of my life.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll turn fifty-eight.

Six years older than you were when you left us.

The memories I do have often come in flashes.

You holding my hand as a child.

Your smile that always seemed to make things feel better.

Your deep, throaty laugh that was impossible not to join.

Your quick wit that made your eyes sparkle and sent ripples of laughter through a room.

I know that, like me, you were a Leo.

I know you had two sisters and a brother.

I know your childhood wasn’t easy in many ways.

I know you loved your siblings deeply and carried a special tenderness for your brother with Down syndrome.

I know you and Dad loved each other very much.

I know you loved being a mother and a grandmother.

Even now, countless nieces and nephews still speak of your kindness and your love.

And I also remember something else.

I remember a sadness in you.

Even as a child, I could feel it.

I often wanted to make you happier. I wanted somehow to ease whatever burden you were carrying, even though I couldn’t have named it at the time.

Yet with all the memories I do have, there is so much I don’t know.

I don’t know the real you.

Not just the mother you were to me, but the woman you were. The dreams you carried. The fears you held. The choices you regretted. The moments that shaped you. The things that made you laugh when no one else was around.

Those are the questions daughters often get to ask as they grow into adulthood.

Those are the conversations we never had.

Today, as I almost frantically searched for photographs, I realized I wasn’t really looking for pictures.

I was looking for you.

I was looking for a doorway into the conversations I never got to have.

The answers I never got to hear.

The stories I never got to receive.

And as I sat with the sadness and anger, another realization emerged.

Part of the ache wasn’t simply that I didn’t get to know you more deeply.

It was that you didn’t get to know me either.

You never got to meet the woman I became.

You never got to see me find my voice.

You never got to hear the stories that now live inside me.

You never got to witness the long road of healing, the heartbreaks, the adventures, the friendships, the laughter, the tears, the lessons, or the dreams that continue to call me forward.

The longing to hear your stories and share my own suddenly became a deep ache for what didn’t happen and what I believed never could.

Then, as I sat with that longing, I remembered something I have come to know as true.

Death doesn’t end a relationship.

It changes it.

My relationship with you didn’t end thirty-eight years ago.

It simply changed form.

The story that you and I could no longer know one another was just that—a story.

And with that realization, something inside me softened.

The sadness remained, but it was no longer alone.

So I went outside and sat beneath the stars.

As I settled onto the front step, I pressed play.

Joni Mitchell began singing Both Sides Now.

I cried.

And then I laughed.

Spreading my arms wide, I silently invited you to see me.

And I asked to see you too.

When the song ended, I sat quietly and listened as the sounds of the night filled the space around me.

The air felt alive.

My heart opened wider still.

Waves of emotion moved through me as I sensed something beyond words.

Beyond memories.

Beyond details.

I felt you and I sharing our stories without needing to tell them.

Soul to soul.

Heart to heart.

And when I finally walked back inside, I felt something unexpected.

Joy.

A gentle knowing that somehow, in a way I can’t fully explain, you and I knew a little more about each other than we did that morning.

Happy Birthday, Faith.

Your body would have been ninety today.

But your soul—and the essence of who you are—is timeless.

Love,

Your daughter,

Jennifer