Something For All Seasons

The mail yesterday brought me something I will be able to keep that will be a reminder for all seasons for me.

It was a Christmas card, mailed to me by my cousin Becky.

What's so special about this card?

Well, it was made by Becky's mother - one of her last crafting projects, you see, and I knew it was a card made by my Aunt Mary as soon as my fingers touched the card as I removed it from the envelope.

This card is one of those that you do a small holidday message in counted cross stitch and then, paste that embroidered piece inside a card with a special sized opening to hold pieces like that. Aunt Mary, if you have been following my blog for anytime now, just passed away this past October and, I suppose the best term to give her, besides being a loving, lovely aunt, would be that she was my mentor, my guiding star, my surrogate mother, who I frequently turned to over the years for a shoulder to cry on at times and one to give me advice on just about everything.

The fact that her death, the loss there, is still very raw within me, caused me to go sit in my little corner of a room and weep as I read the message on the card as well as the note Becky had put inside with the card. In her note, Becky told how her mother had organized so many things - probably her way of doing things in anticipation of NOT being here with us much longer - and anyway, as such, she had made these cards this past spring, almost all ready to be mailed out. Beck and her younger daughter, Abby, had finished up what was left to be done on the cards, addressed them, made the beautiful little note to be inserted with them and shipped them out.

As Becky wrote at the bottom of the note, this was a message for Christmas, sent by her Mom, from her new home in heaven.

And yes, how much I do agree with Becky's thoughts there.

And also, because of how much Aunt Mary meant to me - to my entire family for that matter - this card has now been placed on the mirror above my dresser in my bedroom. Every day now, as I get up in the morning and look at that mirror, I'll see that card and remember her, the way she was, what she meant to me throughout my entire life and how she also thought to send this card from heaven.

It just makes life and the sadness it often brings much easier to cope with simply by looking at that beautiful card and the message it carries with it.

It brings the Christmas message and the spirit of the season now and enables it to be kept, for me, for all seasons to come, however many they may be.