“Tomorrow, She Would Have Turned 80”
Tomorrow, my Mama would have turned 80 years old.
That number feels impossible somehow.
Because in my mind, she is still moving through the kitchen… still calling my name from another room… still laughing at something simple… still being “Mom” in all the ways that mattered most.
She passed away just a few weeks before her 77th birthday.
And somehow, three years later, grief still has a way of quietly showing up without asking permission.
Some days it arrives loudly.
Other days it slips in softly through a memory, a song, a smell, an old photograph, or a moment when I instinctively think, “I should call Mom.”
I miss her voice.
I miss her presence.
I miss the comfort of simply knowing she was here.
But more than anything, I’m grateful.
Grateful that I got to be loved by her.
Grateful for the sacrifices I probably didn’t fully understand at the time.
Grateful for the ordinary moments that became sacred once they were gone.
The truth is, love does not end at the grave.
It changes shape.
It becomes memory.
It becomes ache.
It becomes gratitude.
It becomes the quiet ways we carry people forward long after they leave this world.
Tomorrow would have been 80.
And while I wish more than anything she were still here to celebrate it… I celebrate her anyway.
Because she mattered.
Because she was loved.
Because she still is.
Happy Birthday, Mama.
I miss you.
And I always will.
The Quiet Path 