Happy Birthday

Dear Samantha,

We looked forward to this day, the two of us. We each wanted to plan something cool for the other's milestone, and talked of going to Hawaii or back to the Virgin Islands. That will not happen now. At least, not for this occasion.

This was always the short window of time when you were 2 years ahead of me, instead of just 1. We would joke how your were a cradle-robbing perv, preying on the poor defenseless underclassman. When we could afford it, I'd get you a day at the spa, or some other way to pamper yourself. We'd always go out to dinner with the family, at a place of the birthday-person's choosing. And we'd always get intimate time together after the kids were in bed.

Your chocolate cake is here, with a big wax four and zero on it. Kayleigh insisted.

How much our lives have changed since you were the age I am now. You've gone on to new horizons, and I've found my own here on Earth.

Our children are growing up - you would hardly recognize them in some ways, and yet you would always know them as your own. Tyler is fully on the road to becoming a man, and Kayleigh now charts a course in your performance footsteps. She sings along to our old music and practices makeup application in her bedroom. That should sound familiar to the suburban California teenage thespian who once caught my eye in drama class, and who met my shoes years earlier while we were both working tech on Romeo and Juliet at the Palo Alto Children's Theater.

I will always miss your presence, but the hurt of your passing has dilluted with time. And you will always have my love, that part of my heart that blossomed in having grown up with you. That love will not grow weaker with time - that is a constant, and will endure as long as our energy lives on.

Happy 40th birthday, Sam. You may not have made this milestone in the flesh, but we celebrate it in your honor anyway. Love, always.

Todd