Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl
Today would have been my daughter’s birthday.
This is what I wrote on the first birthday she didn’t reach, on Betsey’s 4th birthday.
Betsey, so much time has gone by. Your younger siblings are within reach of having children of their own and discuss naming daughters after you.
You were the oldest, now you are the youngest.
I think about you and how everyone else changes, time touches us all and we get injured or break down and add lines to our face, but you were touched so hard by time that now you aren’t touched at all. Only our memories of you are still subject to mortality.
I think about all the times we never had together and all the times we did and I miss them all so much and I miss you so much.
I want to carry you in my arms or change your trache one more time. Anything.
Betsey.
G
May 4, 2026
We have a Betsey Pearl page, tab in the header.
John Mansfield
May 4, 2026
Betsey Pearl and I share the same birthday. This one is my 60th, a big round number.
My mother died at 38 when I was 19. She was the 5th of 10 sisters (four brothers also), and as the years went on I mentally placed her still in the middle of my aunts as they aged without thinking about what I was doing. That continued for about three decades until it didn’t make sense anymore. I am much older than she had ever been; though she’s my mother she was never close to as old as I am now. She was only ever a younger woman.
E. C.
May 4, 2026
Two of my favorite mourning songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u24h4aEw2eI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2AU39MBXQ