Today was so pretty, a fall morning of serendipity. Father Sky sketched a deep blue sky canvas and Mother Nature pulled her cotton bolls apart and flung the pieces in the sky, dotting the sky canvas with clouds bright white and cigar smoke gray. The sun was yellow and warm in the day’s cool. A heavy breeze rattled the wind chimes all day producing a fall symphony of tintinnabulations. My bird friends are scarce this morning. They’ll be back late afternoon for nibbles of sunflower seeds before they roost for the night. The cardinals are so faithful to visit and soothe my soul each day.

September was and the coming winter holidays are tempered with melancholy times for me. September 18th is my daughter’s birthday and the beauty of fall’s colors help me remember her smile, her humor, and joy for life. Sometimes I leave a birthday cupcake on her grave. Sometimes I give a generous tip on her birthday to my grocery helper. Her death begins the winter angst for me. Thanksgiving rolls around and there are two empty chairs at our families’ holiday dinner tables — one for Rosie, empty for 23 years, and one for Chief, empty for four years.

Those two chairs stay empty at the dinner tables through Christmas, their place cards resting on the dining tables near the holiday centerpieces. January 2nd will be the fifth anniversary of Chief’s death and March 17th will be the 24th anniversary of Rosie’s death. My memories sustain me when the sadness flows. Once these red letter days are overcome, the glorious spring and the earth’s rebirth brings a thankful joy to me that spreads through the summer, warming my heart with remembrances of Chief’s love of spring and gardening and of happy times with my daughter. I feel the warmth of their love most in the spring’s warm sunshine.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “A death is not the extinguishing of a light, but the putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come.” I believe and I am comforted by my thoughts of being reunited in heaven with deceased loved ones, our separation from them only temporary as we wait for our eternal togetherness. I wear Chief’s wedding ring on my thumb and I’m putting it back on his finger when we have our reunion in heaven. We read in Thessalonians 4:17, “Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”

The death of a loved one is not an end to our love. Love transcends death and the spirits of our loved ones surround us and are present in our lives. “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight,” Rossiter Worthington Raymond. One of my friends lost her husband to cancer. He told her and the family’s grandchildren, “Every time you see a rainbow, remember how much BooPa loves you.” Once their whole family went out to eat together and the sky was filled with a double rainbow when they came out of the restaurant. Have to believe he sent it. Can’t tell me any different. “Heaven is where love never dies and our bonds with love ones grow stronger each day,” Unknown.

I think we need to be conscious of making memories with our loved ones, our children and our grandchildren, giving them remembrances of glorious golden days to look back on with smiles when we’re no longer here with them. Death is a deep heartache. Our love and memories are treasures that can’t be taken away, treasures that comfort us in our grief. Richard Puz wrote, “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

“Those we love don’t go away; they walk beside us every day.” — Anonymous