‘Tis the season for days when emotions cascade through me.

Happens often when my thoughts of MK are front and center, especially during holidays.

Today is our son and daughter-in-law’s anniversary.  I look at photos and think of a magical event, appreciate their accomplishments, and enjoy how far how much has taken place since that day!  These memories toss me back.  MK had set walking Thomas down the aisle as her extraordinary goal at a time of intense, daily regimens of PT and OT following her brain surgeries.  While I knew better than to ever doubt an MK decision, internally I wondered.  Those few steps were looking like Everest to me.  Of course she walked!  Not only did she make that aisle, arm-in-arm with our son, she added presenting a toast to them at their reception.  So many emotions for one day!

Then I was putting out a few holiday decorations.  WHAM!  Before I’d stretched a single light, I caught another wave. 

Searching bins for decorations I discovered a single, old sheet of notebook paper.  Before I’d unfolded its first crease I recognized MK’s distinctive lefty handwriting.  Just seeing the handwriting caused me to lose a breath. 

I’ve no idea how this page found its way to that Christmas bin, but it did.  I’d never seen it before.  This was a note she’d penned between her diagnosis and surgery.  Meant for a friend it contained some of her desires should she not survive surgery.  I recognized most everything written there as she’d reiterated most to me during far later days.  The one ‘new’ item was a song she’d wanted played.  Choking on sadness, I had to smile at how it was so MK.

First the artist was Barbra Streisand.  MK loved to sing Streisand songs before we’d ever met.  During her early collegiate days she was a cabaret singer at a local piano bar in town and Streisand’s songs were her mainstay.  Then there was the day while dating, before we were married, when she serenaded me to Streisand songs as we swung together on a set of old, rickety swings in a park in the tiny Ohio town of Gibsonburg. 

I admit as I read the song title it didn’t ring any bells in my memory.  Odd, since I thought I knew all of her favorites while wearing out several of Streisand’s LPs, especially People and The Way We Were. 

Thumbing through iTunes, I found it.  “Why Did I Choose You”.  I listened and soon I recognized the tune.  Listening intently I lost it when Barbra crooned “And when I lost my heart so many years ago, I lost it lovingly and willingly to you.”

Took me a bit to recover from that.

Then while encased in today’s grey winter day, our children rushed me.  Just last night both of them, due to very different arcs and reasons, proved to me they’d each observed, absorbed, learned, and that very day lived the very most meaningful attributes of their mom.

Good thing Napa doesn’t mind when I sit, a blubbering old fool, telling her all this….