The time between last Tuesday and now seemed like a haze. I was busy but sometimes felt like everything was in slow motion. It was only 8 months ago that we were preparing for Dad’s funeral. I had gone through all the old family pictures then but now I was looking at them with a new eye. Selecting the pictures to display at Moms funeral was more than a trip down memory lane. As I went through the pictures of my Mother, I found myself wondering what that young girl I was gazing at expected from life. Who was she, what were her dreams. She never told us. Did we ever ask? If we did ask, she would not have shared much. That wasn’t her way or the way of many of her generation. She was uncomfortable with public displays of emotion. I looked at her surrounded by friends. She looked like someone who loved life. I knew she had worked in a department store and thoroughly enjoyed the buying trips to New York. It was on one of those buying trips that she selected the wedding gown she wore when she and Dad got married. She was beautiful. She was really beautiful and looked like the world was her oyster. She married Dad. She moved away from the only home she had known and all those smiling friends in the pictures. She left the job she loved. Was she happy? I hope so. I do know she loved my father. I know that she missed him so much when he passed away. I know that all she wanted the last 8 months was for God to take her so she could be with him. Right now, she is right where she wanted to be. She is happy.