Happy Birthday, Sweetheart. You caught up to me again!

Actually, I’m writing this in advance since birthday day I will be en route to Washington, DC {okay, Landover, MD} to take in the Packers-Redskins game with one of your clones, Cole. As much as I cherish the time with the turncoat Skins fan, I’ll be missing and thinking about you.

Birthdays were never really “special” for us, especially as we meandered into emptying the nest. Baubles and beads were replaced with twosome events — concerts, movies, dinner, weekend trips and even some football games tossed in. On your last birthday on earth, we  trekked to Buffalo in the snow and sleet to watch the Browns {one of your favorite football teams, the other being Green Bay} lose to the Bills. Birthdays evolved into an event meant for the two of us.

I miss that.

I wish I could tell you a hundred times {okay, maybe not a hundred, but a lot} how much I love and loved you. Love, like in respect and appreciation and unfailing. I still do that even though our conversations are one-sided and through a bronze veil.

I was privileged to watch you grow up from an 18 year old siren to a strong, passionate, loving, caring, compassionate and grounded wife and mother {and grandmother}. That was the future I envisioned when I first saw that scrawny girl way back when. I believed in you … and you believed in me.

You had an incredible passion for life, although your early experiences growing up often quelled that fire. You were realistic … I was and still am the dreamer. You saw the glass half empty … I saw it half full. You were prone to worry … I was and still am aloof.

It was precisely this disparity, I think, that made our marriage work. Very few times in our 40 years together were we both approaching life’s situations the same way … or as you would fondly say, “right brain … left brain.” It was your realism that tempered my dreams, just as much as it was my aloofness that quieted — I hope — your fears. We never really decided whether the glass was half full or half empty. Instead we both became grateful we had a glass at all.

I wish things were different. I wish you were still here with me physically and  enjoying this football game in the brisk night. I miss teasing you and being teased by you. I miss your smile and even your occasional grumpiness — especially in the dawn’s early light. But, it’s not. Life has a way of changing expectations.

I can tell you, you haven’t aged a day. In fact, in my mind’s eye, you have become more beautiful — if that was at all possible. That’s why I can still say:

With all my love, Happy, Happy Birthday … For all our Yesterdays … Today … Tomorrow … and throughout Eternity.

THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: Don’t sit on the sidelines of life intimidated, thinking you’re unqualified. When you give God what you have, He’ll multiply it.