It’s been another year Mommy. Three hundred sixty five days, or rather three hundred sixty five nights of missing you still.

 Sam and I pray each night and  wish you good night like always. We simply wish you all the love our human brains can manage to imagine and send them across the heavens and the universe. We pray too that these would reach you somehow, because we hold on to God’s promise of one day sharing our heavenly home with you. So now I wonder how fast can our love really travel to you.

On the other hand, time travels fast, as it loves to do. Sammie is grown now, and is no longer the little girl we once had so many dreams planned for. She has started now to make dreams of her own, as I only wish that I’d still be there somewhere too. She is independently-minded and sometimes a little headstong, but who really was not at her age. In many ways, she is a lot like you, iron-willed yet willing to follow, pragmatic yet overflowing with compassion. So that’s why I miss you even more today.

I also look at our old photographs together and see how much older I’ve become. The seasons  it seems have not been very kind to me. I only wish I can photoshop a few wrinkles in you too, if only for a few moments of make-believe, imagine that you are still there with me. But I shall always remember you in your perfection, forever young and beautiful as the day I first met you at the Gourmet Cafe.

With regard to the moving on thing. You know I try to keep pushing forward, although sometimes it feels like Sisyphus up the mountain. I will try to be brave and hopeful if only because of Sam. Please do hold my hand  through these and replace my fears with  your comforting embrace.

I have many times asked to hear your voice even for just one more time; I haven’t had much success with that. But I have lately also realized that maybe you actually continue to speak to me. Through the stories about us that I hear from your friends, through your old birthday cards, through your poems and letters, through your funny but insightful jokes, through your purple- colored knick-knacks, and of course, through your life of grace, beauty and love.

Sam and I love you Mommy, now and through eternity. Please always remember that.

So then how fast does love travel? Surely faster than a hearbeat, faster than the waves of your beautiful memories, even faster than and as often as I can whisper your name each night.

(I always come back to this video just to remember and get a good cry)