Happy Birthday Joe

It's been an up and down kind of day.  I had done really well until lunch time when I checked Facebook and saw all the Happy Birthday wishes that friends were posting on Joe's wall.  That brought some tears to my eyes for a little while.  Once I was home this evening I got to thinking about his birthday, the snow yesterday and the forecast for more over the next two days.  He would have been like a kid in the candy store: his birthday and multiple snows all in the same week.  We wouldn't even have had to get him a present, the snow would have been enough.  A big goofy smile and lots and lots of hot chocolate.  That man could down some hot chocolate on snow days....and other days.  Thinking about the snow got me to thinking about snows in the past: the 20+ inches in January 2000 when we hiked 2 miles to a convenience store; the ice storm of December 2002 when we had no power for 7 days and boiled water on top of a kerosene heater; the snow of February 2004 when we walked through the snow covered woods of what is now our neighborhood; the snow/ice of January 2006 when we decided to go for a walk but only made it to the sidewalk in front of the house before both of us slipped and fell thus deciding to go back inside for two days; and on and on up to the snow of January 2009 when we went walking in the post-dawn hours while the snow was still falling.  That's where the photos below were taken.  As I looked at the photos, the one that struck me most was the one of Joe looking at me in the distance and the one of Joe walking away, footprints in the snow.

                              

                           

That's when I couldn't hold back the tears and I had a long cry.  I remember vividly taking that photo and subsequently talking with Joe about how much I liked it.  The simplicity, the footprints, just Joe and the snow.  I even had it as my laptop wallpaper for a while.  Now it takes on a whole different feeling, a whole different meaning for me.  With that I decided to come on upstairs and go to bed.  As I brushed my teeth, I looked over at the window and the plant that sits there.  It's a poinsettia that a piano student of Joe's gave him in November 2011.  It was blooming then and right after Christmas the blooms fell off.  It didn't bloom again until I noticed one on it on Joe's birthday last year, one month after he died.  Tonight as I glanced over there I noticed something new...once again on his birthday.  One small, solitary bloom.  From Joe.

                               

It may sound silly to some, but Joe knows how much I like the color red and have at least one red thing in each room. Giving me a little red flower is just the type of thing he would do to surprise me.  I love you Joe.  Happy Birthday.