109 months into your precious life .. 109 months gone today ..
Bottom: Christmas Eve 2025 – My oldest Logan, myself, and Morgan in Spirit
The piano plays—dramatic, then soft—each note carrying the weight of years gone by. It pulls me backward into my youth, into moments stitched together by laughter, by ritual, by people who once filled the holidays and now live only in memory. The music opens doors I didn’t ask it to, and behind them are faces I miss, voices I strain to hear again. Especially yours, Morgan.
The season has a way of magnifying absence—of turning silence into something almost audible. And on this first day, the day that holds both an ending and a beginning, the weight of it settles heavier. December 1 will forever be yours. January 1 moves forward anyway.
As Greensleeves plays, a performance unfolds in my mind, one meant to be witnessed rather than explained. I imagine an audience holding its breath, bracing themselves for the emotion they sense is coming. They know the time is near—near for reflection, near for grief, near for that familiar ache that arrives without invitation. I’m dressed in an elegant, flowing gown, surrounded by darkness that isn’t frightening, only reverent. It is a quiet solemnity—the kind that understands loss.
Somewhere beyond me, an orchestra swells—strings rising gently, then falling away—carrying what my hands alone cannot. The music becomes a language for everything I cannot say: the love that remains, the longing that does not loosen its grip, the memories that return each season like faithful ghosts.
This is how I meet the first of the month.
This is how I meet the new year.
Between note and breath, I play on—for you, for the years that shaped me, and for the enduring truth I continue to learn: love does not end, even when the song grows quiet.
You should be here ~ I love you.
Mom
Daly Chronicles 