Dear Mum,

I called your sister today.  When she answered the phone she sounded a lot like you, only more English.  I told Fran that I missed you.  She misses you as well.  You guys hadn't seen each other for four or five years but I know you guys talked for hours on the phone every couple of weeks.  Fran said that sometimes she thinks of something and wants to ask you about it, something from growing up, and then she realizes she can't ask you anymore.  I get that too.  The other day I wanted to ask you something and then I realized that I couldn't ever ask you and I wondered why I never bothered to ask you while you were alive.

It's getting close to Christmas and it will be my first Christmas without you.  I feel like such a child but I'm missing you a lot.  I was at Safeway today, buying some groceries and I thought of you.  We shopped together at Safeway every weekend.  I was going to buy myself an orchid but I couldn't, they reminded me too much of you.  You were always trying to get those orchids in the plant room to bloom.

The African violet that you bought not long before you died is sitting on my dining room table, in full bloom.  You would have loved it.  The flowers are a pinkish-purple with white edges.  I'll never look at an African violet, or an orchid, without thinking of you.

I was down at the dog park a couple of weeks ago and somebody had hung up homemade bird feeders for the chickadees;  they were flitting about, enjoying the sunflower seeds.  I tried holding some seeds in my hand, hoping that they would eat out of my hand but that didn't happen.   I'm glad we were able to take you down to the river for a weiner roast last fall, so thankful that you got to feed the chickadees out of your hand.  I know you enjoyed that day a great deal.  I think it was your last good day.

I wish I had been more patient with you, not gotten so irritated with waiting for you to put on your gloves or do up your zipper or "quickly" go to the bathroom.  It seems I was always in a hurry, why I don't know.  We are a long time dead and now I have no way of saying "I'm sorry."   I may have been impatient but I never considered you a burden mum, nor did I consider taking care of you a duty.  You were my mum.  What I did for you, I did out of love.

I miss you and I will be thinking of you this Christmas.

Love, D.