Happy Birthday Andrea Hopkins

She would have been 30 today. I can't help but wonder how she would have celebrated this milestone. She was not afraid of being 30. She would've had a vegetarian birthday dinner with her parents, gone to the city (Chicago) with her friends. I would have called her, hoping to hear her voice and not her voicemail. Someone would have bought her something to do with Hello Kitty.

Happy Birthday, Andi. I love and miss you.

 
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.

All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland