Today would have been my Aunt’s 53rd Birthday.

If anything, my aunt was the main reason I decided to start my own business.

She was always thinking up crazy plans. She never doubted her ability to conjure up a good idea and create success with whatever resources were available to her. Even if the idea turned bad, she stuck with it. She made it work, and she became stronger and more educated by the experience. She was an inspiration.

She was like a second mother to me. The other half of my own mother. In childhood, they had been abandoned by their parents and gained strength in their shared determination to stay together no matter what happened to them. They were two very opposite people who were entirely lost without each other. She is wrapped up in all of my childhood memories. On the good days, I can still hear her laugh, and then I remember the days we spent talking about life and drinking tea in my mother’s living room.

I never truly believed that cancer could take her from us. She was too strong. It seemed impossible after all that she struggled through that her own body would rob her of the life she fought so hard to build. During her treatment she would become very ill, but she would always get better and come back to us. We always had hope that she would conquer it and stay with us until she had a chance to grow old. I think we were all in denial.

In December, the doctors said that she had three more months, but she was gone on January 4th, 2008. Her daughter was holding her when she passed.

And now, we’re still picking up the pieces. We’re trying to figure out what life should be like without her. It has been difficult.

I’m not doing her justice here. I can’t find the proper words to express the loss we feel. I’m too wrapped up in images of her illness to describe her life as it should have continued.

We should be calling her today, wishing her a happy birthday, talking about all the things she’s done to the house and figuring out the next time we will be able to get together.

It’s no longer a day of celebration. Instead, it’s a day of silence and remembrance. A day of writing.

Pamela