Mom's Birthday

My Mom, Henrietta Adelaide Hackman Powell, would have been 92 today, if she had lived past 79. Seems like only yesterday we were navigating liver cancer, hospice and keeping family clued in. She died about a week after her 78th birthday. I remember two caregivers and myself, with a little cake -- singing the Happy Birthday song. I don't know if Mom heard us or not. We were all crying. It was a damp, yodelish, sad scene, but we each loved Mom in our ways.

I'm reading the daily letters between Mom and Dad, John "Jack" Edward Powell, during the War. So far, Dad is in Navy Flight School and deciding he doesn't have the passion to fly. Mom is at her family home in Seattle -- the huge Craftsman style I remember on Military Road. A magical place for a little girl. But Mom is trudging off to Boeing, working as a "steno" in the business her two brothers and a brother-in-law all made their careers. She and Dad became engaged and later married, all on his uncertain breaks between school and war. They married in the gardens of the Military Road house.