We celebrated my mom’s 70th birthday this weekend. If my dad was still alive, we would have celebrated his 66th last week.

I just got home from a long weekend with my mom and family in a small artist community in the middle of nowhere Texas. When I hugged my mom goodbye, I had a terrible sense of foreboding. I had a flash that I wouldn’t see her again and that frightened me. I will be an orphan when that day arrives.

It is inevitable that parents die. But it wasn’t until that moment that I realized how quickly finite our relationships are with them. My grandpa (dad’s dad) when asked what he thought when he looked back over his long life said, “I never realized it would go by so quickly.”

My mom and I have always had a tenuous relationship, but we have also always had a strong bond. She isn’t very demonstrative, but I know that she loves me deeply. So did my dad. I can’t imagine a world without that love existing for me. Some of it is already lost.

The present has a way of moving quickly into the past like lines on the road seen through the car back window. I never realized it would go by so quickly.

Mom, happy birthday.
I love you.