June 30th has always been special because it is my mother’s birthday. It seems special on its own, too, simply because it marks the last day of June, that word that seems so much more evocative than the words July or August.
Last year on this day I was leaning over a cliff-side watching my mom’s ashes drift down to her beloved Hawaiian waters…
…and spending the next several days getting to know her beloved Kauai a little bit. The days were just full of her.
Today will be full of errands in town…but it will still be full of her.
As my eyes are often full these days, with missing her.
Two birthdays ago, when her death was still new, I wondered if I would feel her presence still. It hasn’t turned out to be so, tho’ she comes to me in my dreams now and then. And our home is full of her in so many ways…her pictures, her rings, her room…now our room.
She is always with me, in a way, as she always has been.
Tonight, when I return from town, after I’ve put away the groceries and tended the chicks, I will pour a small glass of wine and take it and me out to the dusky garden. Under the nearly-full moon I will sip my wine, bathe in the moon’s glow as my mom used to love to do, and let her love wash over me…and fill me up…as it always has…and it always will.
