been thirty-three years old, this year on May 24, 2007.What would she have chosen to be, if she was alive? Would she have found her feet, as a single mother? Would she have openly embraced her passion for dance...for children and animals...for music...for Mother Nature?
Would she have come out of her shell?
Would she have become a teacher, perhaps? A doctor or a nurse? Would she have followed her mother, into an alternative healing route?
Perhaps she would have taken her love of writing poetry a bit further; perhaps she would have wholeheartedly embraced horticulture, in all its many guises. Perhaps she would have become a master herbalist.
The possibilities for her were endless...but she couldn't see them. Strong gates and fences kept her away from a clear path; she couldn't climb the hurdles, or find an unlocked gate.
She gave us Bree; some- times, as Bree grows older, it is difficult for me to differentiate between the two...Bree looks and acts so much like her mother, it startles and unbalances me.
Would she have eventually found her Prince? Would her marriage ceremony have involved lilacs...her favourite flower? Would she have had other children...a whole passel of kids to teach with her sensitive, gentle wisdom?
These are the questions that parents who have lost children ask themselves, over and over again. As each birthday arises, I watch for signs of Katrina; she walks
closely with me in the month of May. She visits in the form of a small, brown Bird that insists on keeping close company with me. She visits in the form of Eagle, circling low over me, as I work in the garden.She visits in the first Rose...a deep, dark red Rose that shines in the mass of greenery surrounding it.
And she visits in the form of deep, loving energy...an energy I can feel as a physical weight. She watches very closely in May.
So I know, intuitively, that her hand is involved in everything her family does. Whatever need arises, from the smallest to the largest, Katrina is a powerful ally.
When Katrina died, someone told me it was a waste. I said no, she had done and taught so much throughout her short life...a gift like this could never be a waste.
I believe she had done what her soul had set out to do. She was needed elsewhere, but
her energy still lingers. I can't see her, other than in dreams, but the tie between us is strong. It is un- breakable.Katrina already was a success. But still I muse, thinking and seeing her as a 33 year old woman...a woman heading into her prime years. A woman who is happy, healthy and content...just a more mature version of her at 23 years of age, when she died.
And that's the imprint she leaves behind with me, now, when she visits.
Wisdom. Maturity. S
ensitivity. Eyes that see and know. The surety that all is exactly as it should be. Peace and calm. And finally... accept- ance of where she is.She is an ongoing gift to me, her mother, one whom I know I can count on with no reservations.
Happy Birthday, Katrina, my dear.
