Today looks like it's going to be a nice day, doesn't it?
Not quite as nice as your birthday back in 2002, though.
That was a glorious spring day, full of life, with flowers, like this one I found down at the Chinese Garden the other day, blooming all around us. The little courtyard at Emanuel Hospital was a riot of colorful beauty the day you were born.
Which just made the day that much harder. I know, I say this a lot, but it was bitter hard knowing that each one of those fragile, ephemeral blooms would live longer than you would.
Still is.
Today?
Oh, no, it's nowhere near that beautiful.
Sunny, sure, but cold.
That's the way our winters usually are, y'know; sunny and cold or rainy and not-quite-as-cold.
I wish you already knew that, that we'd had other winters and blooming springs to remember. That you'd grown tall and strong, in sun and shadow, that we could celebrate this day as a happy one instead as a slowly dwindling memory and a distant grief.
But instead, here we are. Having just this one day to sit together in silence.
And then, as always, you will go. The next day now almost a quarter-century ago when we kissed goodbye, you in your little yellow onesie that you took with you and returned to us only as ash and sorrow.
I miss you, love.
I always will.
I know your mother does, too, and she, and I, will keep your memory alive until it is our own time to get up and pass through that door you closed behind you, all those years ago.
Goodbye, love.
Goodbye.
Bryn Rose Gellar
March 1, 2002 - March 2, 2002
