Happy Birthday, Francine

This is somehow Francine’s second birthday since she passed to the Lord. No, I don’t understand it either.

It was our custom to celebrate her birthday with a dinner at some new place we hadn’t tried before. In 2023, we had her birthday dinner at a local tapas place called Amor. Her photo from that dinner now hangs in the dining room at Pistachio House.

Before the plague years, we would also spend a long weekend on Vashon Island sometime in July. We had planned on resuming that custom last year. Instead, I will be going up to the island in early August to conduct an altar server training at our sister parish of Saint John Vianney.

As I did last year, I visited her grave at the cemetery this morning. I had originally planned to hike today, but the heat dissuaded me.

This evening, some friends and I plan to go out for dinner to a place she’d never been.

One month ago today, I arrived in Santiago, on the first anniversary of Francine’s death. Everything today is memories and anniversaries. I suppose it always will be.

Happy birthday, my beautiful bride.