Happy Birthday, Sugar

Well. I know it's late, and I tried not to get all macabre and depressed today. I fought against thinking of her and kept my concentration on whatever task was facing me that moment.

Then I realized that rather than thoughts of her final illness, or funeral, I was standing in her kitchen, seeing myself on a stool so I can reach the top of the counter, carefully pressing the proper cross-hatching into the tops of her peanut butter cookies with the back of a fork.

I was looking at her picture and thinking of how it didn't capture the way her smile lit up the room and her laugh was as whole hearted as everything else she did.

I was playing with my horses, laughing at their antics and thinking of how much she would have loved to see Monkey kissing my palm or trying to steal my hat.

I realized that every time I thought of her today it made me smile, it was a good memory. Tinged with sadness, sure. She's been gone two years, I still miss her.

But today she would have been a hundred and two.

Happy Birthday, Sugar. We all miss you, but you still make me smile.