Mom's Letters

 I have some letters from my mom.

She wrote them to me

while she was visiting her sister in Washington.

I take them out every so often.

I seem to pick up something different

each time I read them, the older I get.

This time,

I realized something new.

I had never looked closely

at the envelope's postmark date.

The envelope was postmarked September 1998

Mom knew she was not going to beat her cancer

when she wrote them to me.

Knowing this..

every word takes on a whole new meaning.

That's why she took that trip to WA,

we didn't have money to travel,

but she needed to say goodbye to her sister.

The envelope was postmarked September 1998

and she died in November 1998.

It makes me wonder what else I will learn

the next time I take them out to read.