52

Dear John,

Tomorrow would be your 52nd birthday. S and I will be getting a cookie cake to mark the day - aside from your mom's cream puffs, which she would always make for your birthday, cookie cake was your favorite. S wants the cake to read Deez Nuts, because she's a teen who thinks she's hilarious. I told her you wouldn't approve, but her argument was that you would think it was funny if YOU said it. That's probably true.

I have to go to court for work tomorrow. It's in the town where your sister lives. It's not far out of the way, so I will make a stop by the cemetery on my way back to work. Since I have to leave the state to do so, I can't take the state car. While you wouldn't approve of me using my own car for a work function, you would approve of taking the opportunity to get cheaper gas. So I guess it's a wash on that score.  

I don't even know why I keep going to the cemetery. I never went to visit my parents' graves...well, maybe once after my mom died. I know that only your body is there. If there is such a thing as a soul, yours would certainly not be hanging around there.  And yet, I feel compelled to keep going.  I guess I feel closer to you there, in that space.

I keep hearing Free Fallin' by Tom Petty on the radio - I feel like you speak to me through songs. Music was sort of our thing - you were always testing my knowledge of songs and artists.  The first gift you ever gave me was a Portishead CD.  I thought it was because you recognized that I liked them, but in reality, you got an extra free one with your Columbia music free trial.  You would play music to drown the ringing in your head. It used to annoy me beyond measure - I didn't want to hear blasting metal music when I was trying to watch TV or a video on the computer. Now S does it. I like silence. Unless I'm in the car.  

Your family, OTOH, is very much talking about birds as messengers. I saw a huge hawk out back the other week. It was on a tree in the cemetery and I could see it pretty clearly from 100 feet or more away. Then, a couple days later, we came home and there was a tiny hawk (maybe a falcon?) across from the garage. She was having a little snack out there. I wasn't able to get a photo of her, but I did get a picture of the remains of her snack. It looked like maybe a mourning dove. You used to tell me the mourning doves who would visit were my mom, coming to check on me. You thought the cardinals were maybe your dad or your grandma (or sometimes my mom). Even your sister K sent me a text to tell me that my hawk sightings were not coincidental - she said she's seen a lot of hawks since you've been gone.  They squawk at her a lot, so it makes sense that she associates them with you.

I hear that your aunt is in hospice care.  I don't know that I spoke to her more than once or twice.  She seemed nice - I don't think you much cared for her.  I know you actively disliked her husband.  She apparently has cirrhosis of the liver.  I am speculating on that, though there's no one I can ask how that came about.  Remember when your cousin's wife blocked me on Facebook because I argued with her about Covid being a government plot?  Good times.  She came to your funeral.  I didn't have much to say to her.  I think she spends a lot of time away from home, since her daughter and the grandkids are mid-state instead of up north.  

Anyway, I hope you are...I don't know...celebrating your birthday this year, for a change?  I am quite happy that you were born, and that I got to spend 20 years with you.  I wish we could have had more.

Love,

A