Seventy One

 In a few hours it's going to be dad's birthday again. He would have turned 71 tomorrow.

Thinking of him still takes my breath away. Gone too soon and leaving us all with a hole in our hearts that I don't know how to fill, or how long we must live with this ache until we are reunited.

And once again, it's a pandemic birthday. So we bend the rules a touch just so we can at least have one another in this time that should have been a celebration. Just a mom/wife and her three grown children. The partners have to work; cousins and friends cannot come and join them because of gathering limitations imposed by the government. Lonely and heartbroken.

Sigh, it's very dramatic. I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to heal, or if I even want to heal much at all.