I am seventeen years old. I walk into my mom’s bedroom. We have just celebrated her birthday.

I stop to pick up one of the birthday cards on her dresser. I realize it is the one that we gave her. I open it. I spy our trademark signatures……all five of us. My eyes shift to the other side of the card. Scribbled next to our declarations of love, is the recognizable moniker of my mother.

“I have the greatest children. I will be smiling down on you from heaven.”

I barely make my way to the bedside phone. I slump over it and dial each of my siblings. Now, don’t ask me why I didn’t call my mom, but I didn’t.

By the time my mother walks in the door from work, I am a card clutching, hysterical mess on the living room sofa.

“What on earth is wrong?” asks my mother.

I sob as I hand her the card.

God Bless my mother because she really could be quite funny.

She bursts into equally hysterical laughter.

I am confused.

“I wanted you kids to know how much I love you when the day comes that I am no longer here,” says my mom.

“What?” I gasp. “You’re not dying?”

“No,” my mom responds still laughing.

“Why on earth would you write that in a card?” I beg.

“I keep a box of cards, momentos and keepsakes,” she says.

Let’s just say that my mother kept herself laughing for months as she relayed the story to all of her cohorts. She thought it was ridiculously funny. My siblings and I collected ourselves and had a good laugh (eventually) about the absolute absurdity of the entire story.

Our mother had obviously reached her golden years where she felt reflective of the love she wished to leave behind.

Me………I temporarily lost credibility with my siblings…..go figure.