Happy birthday, Boss.
I miss not being able to pick up the phone and talk to you today.
It seems strange.
You’d have been 99.
I remember when you crossed the line and started being proud about your age, when ‘in my 90s’ morphed into ‘tipping 100’.
I really thought you’d make it.
I thought you’d see out the century.
You went too quickly and too soon.
I had a mass said for you at home today. I watched it online.
The priest left out the birthday remembrance part and it seemed as if you’d died all over again.
You’d have enjoyed the confusion.
There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about you.
I hear you giving out to me when I do something stupid and then laughing when I point out that only the other day you’d done that same thing, too.
Chip off the old block, and all that.
I still turn to you for advice and on good days, I can hear what you have to say.
On bad days, I get lost in the fact that you’re not here.
I talk about you. A lot. I tell people stories about my dad, stories they must have heard a million times by now.
It helps me keep you alive.
I like it when people tell stories about you, too.
About times when you did something unremarkable that left its mark.
About things you used to say.
I stopped myself the other day when I felt the words ‘God save all here’ come to my lips as I entered a room full of people with different gods, different beliefs.
You’d have said it anyway.
And it would have fit you.
And fit you well.
Someday, I will have the same courage of my convictions.
Oh, I nearly forgot.
We’re having lasagne for dinner tonight.
Remember that day, years ago, when mam was away, and I made you lasagne for dinner.
You looked askance at it even as I explained that the carbs came from the pasta and that your meat and veg (carrots and peas) were all there.
Meat and two veg, but in a different form.
And with sauce.
You were always suspicious of what sauces might be hiding.
I should have known better.
When I came in from the kitchen, you had scraped the meat from the pasta and set the sheets aside on your side plate.
You then asked me for potatoes.
I railed, teeth on edge at your recalcitrance.
Carbs are carbs.
Dinner was late that day. Not the usual 1 pm.
But you got what you wanted.
Later that evening, just before tea, at 6 pm, you called me outside, to the back door.
You pointed at the cats’ dish, loaded with your pasta rejects since 2 pm, a gleam of triumph in your eyes.
You see, you said – in a tone that screamed ‘I told you so’ – even the cats wouldn’t eat that stuff.
Point made.
Meat, potatoes, and two veg.
And no sauces.
Happy birthday, Boss.
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3 responses
Happy birthday boss!❤️
Nice to see this Mary, he’s well remembered by all of us. Great photo of the Boss…
The Boss – that’s Bruce Springsteen 🙂 Boss is simply Boss 🙂