Oh Mama,

You never cared much for birthdays but today is yours. I imagine that you would rock your 85th year like no one’s business, continuing your lifelong practice and talent for helping people heal and get closer to divine Love. Your unabashedly hearty, crinkled-eyed, open mouthed laugh would still fill my ears.

As for me, I lie awake trying to grasp how it is that I haven’t spoken to you, heard your laugh, or felt your touch in TWENTY YEARS.

When you first left, I didn’t think I’d make it through a single day without you. Things got brutal toward the end, didn’t they? That horrid disease crept up and took over your insides and turned your vibrancy into dullness. Your beautiful thick hair turned thin, your healthy body skeletal and swollen.

You hardly spoke a word during the month before your death and I believe it was because you wondered if you had been betrayed by God—I think we all wondered.

I really thought we were going to save you—me, Dad, Pam, and God. That our little team would pray the right prayers, find the best doctor, take the most effective approach to fighting stage four cancer. Afterward, and for a long time, I thought we had failed. All of us.

You must have worried that because of what was happening I’d lose my own faith in Love. To be honest, for a while, I did. I doubted almost everything. Was our God truly a loving God, or had we deceived ourselves? For years after we lost you I limped along, tightly gripping a stale faith that no longer brought me peace and inspiration. Then, I lost my first child, and all bets were off. I spent an entire year without any faith at all.

Somehow, I don’t think all of this is news to you. I believe you were riding alongside me the whole time. You stayed close, you answered when I called, and you sent all manner of angels to nudge and protect me.

Well, Mama, twenty years later the world has changed, people you cherished have left, and people you would adore have arrived. Besides your two grandkids, I think the thing you would be most proud of is how I’ve evolved. I’m still the person you taught me to be but nowadays I’m so much better. I’m a writer who can’t stop writing, a present preschool teacher, and a mom who loves her children the way you loved me. I’m sober, clear, and hopeful.

I understand now that none of us failed. Cancer didn’t win. We succeeded because we knew your love, and you knew ours. The love you were, the love you are, has no end—it remains vital, effective, and alive. It was through your earthly death that I learned the single greatest lesson of my own life: love never dies. It is by its very nature, eternal.

Happy Birthday, Mama. I am celebrating you.