Warning - Might Cause Tears

I didn't know where else to save this....This is an email I received from Rev. Jan Ewing.  Jan was a VERY close friend of my mom's and she preformed our wedding ceremony and my mom funeral.  I think this sums up how I felt at her birthday (August 27th) this year. 

Dear Debbie in Heaven,
I’m not sure exactly which day is your birthday, but it pops up every year in my computer on August 27. If not exact, I’m sure it’s close – I doubt your number one priority is whether I have your birthday right or not. I wonder if you know how much you are missed here? Day in day out, someone is always thinking of you and often, it’s me or Carolyn, your sisters, nieces and nephews, certainly your mother and most of all your beautiful daughter, Mandy, who I’m sure never a day goes by that you are not on her mind.
I feel you are hanging in and around us always, laughing with me and sometimes at me, chiding me for taking things too seriously, saying, “Oh come on, give me a break!” Reminding me my days are numbered and to have some fun. I wonder what it is like where you are – is it like we talked about? I’m back east attempting to care for my 93 year old, still smokin’ mother who just had a stroke. She’s got a little of you in her. Left the hospital against medical advice because she thought they’d kill her if she stayed overnight as they wanted her to. Refused all medical tests, doesn’t want extra help around here, though she needs it, maintains her independence as much as she can. In spite of all that, she will be joining you sometime in the next few years I would guess. I hope you keep a place at your table for her and the rest of us when we finally get up your way.
Please keep the hearth warm, a glass of wine on the table and the door ajar for all of us to enter when we are called home with you. Now if it turns out that none of this is true and you are off doing more important or more interesting things, don’t feel you have to wait for me. Not that you would anyway, if something better was waiting.
Anyway, your missing a lot of fun here; floods, wars, work, stress, hot summers and cold winters, illness, death and all the other mortal challenges. Mandy and Tom keep us informed about their lives, though I’m never quite sure seeing life through Tom’s eyes is exactly a true picture, but he is quite entertaining. I think Carolyn has him do work at the house because he makes her laugh and she absolutely loves to argue with him about how to do outside stuff, with both being quite certain they know the best, most efficient way to do the job. It would make you really laugh.
We love you and miss you – Wait! I’m not sure why I’m saying “we”, I’m sitting here by myself, upstairs in my house in New Hampshire, two thousand miles from Utah, in my nothin’s and the most exciting thing I did today was go look for someone’s gravestone in a little New England cemetery up the road a piece. Hope to see you soon…but not tomorrow or the next day. Take care of our old friend Jay. He departed this earthly world a few months ago and I was his chaplain to the end. Surprising to me, but I kind of miss him. How Carolyn and I laughed all over again when I dug out his dusty burial urn, opened it and saw the chip in the top where I, or was it you, dropped it on the floor the night I took it out to show you. Remember the shock as it fell and how hard we laughed? My, how I miss those times.
Keep watch over all of us and keep shining your light to show us the way.
Much love,
Jan