You might remember that my Grandmother passed away the week after my birthday. It wasn’t until the day after I got home that my aunt arrived and we were talking about things that my birthday even came up. She said I must be glad I’d gotten my cards – she’d been with my grandmother and they’d sent them together. Only the mail lady here might be the  least concerned mail lady on the planet, and it hadn’t arrived yet.

A week later I returned home and MK had found it and saved it for me. It was so surreal seeing Gram’s squiggly cursive addressed to me. It was enough. I shoved the card in a drawer and held out a day or two before telling friends I even had it. It is so stupid, honestly, that I can’t open the thing. It’s going to say “Happy Birthday, Love, Grandma”. And wasn’t the whole lesson about how unsure life can be? It’d be pretty ironic for me to wait and then for it to be too late, if you catch my meaning. Because it’s not in my immediate plans. At first I was thinking my next birthday, then I though when I was 30, then 50. There’s no good time to get the last note from someone.  

We have so little of our sentimental things with us I just needed something to hold on to. For a while I brought a little bookmark that she’d given me everywhere- it said “I love you” on it, until I almost lost it on a plane flight and almost broke my neck crawling under the seat while people stared at me. So you can’t go running around with something like that if it is all you have.

The seal of the card is starting to come loose, so I packed it very carefully. And I’ll try to open it- some day.