Really???

Today would have been my mother and dad’s 71st anniversary. I would like to picture them having that celebration in heaven, but we don’t really know how we will be after this life. But, it’s a pleasant thought for me. I started thinking back to something that happened many years ago. We had moved and I told our new neighbor that my parents were married on April 5th and I was born one week later. The neighbor told my mother what I had said, now remember I was just a little kid, and my mother nearly died. She said what Diane failed to tell you is that it was 2 years and one week later. My dad always told me that the day I was born he had two major disappointments. Both happened at the hospital. The first was that the doctor came out and told my dad that our president was dead. Yes, I was born 45 minutes after President Franklin Roosevelt died. The second disappointment was that the doctor came out and told my dad he had a girl. I guess every dad wants a son, but what my dad didn’t know at the time was how attached we would be. I was a daddy’s girl. My dad always took up for me no matter what I did. I don’t ever remember him ever spanking me or ever saying a critical word to me. My mother was the one to be feared. It’s a lonely life to be an only child, but my mother always told me that someday I would thank her for not giving me brothers and sisters. I think she said that because she was the oldest of twelve. I did grow up with aunts and uncles closer to my age, and I’m still close to one aunt who is the same age as me. She is as close to sister as I will ever know. I lived by a cousin a year younger than me, and he felt more like a brother than I’ll ever know, and now he’s gone. I like to picture him entering Heaven and my husband and my mother and dad saying, “Welcome home.” Someday we will all be together, but in the meantime, I want to spend as much time with the people I love and do all the things that I can cram in before I can’t. Tell somebody today how much you care about them—they might not be here tomorrow. DR 4/5/14