November has arrived, a time in the Northern Hemisphere when the days grow colder and all the wonders of winter begin.

It is a season for remembering the passing of the year, a month that sets everyone in a reflective mode.

There are Halloween, Samhain and Dia de los Muertes–celebrations that allow us to share our longings for our departed loved ones.

November is also the month of my birthday. A day that also calls for reflection.

When I was a little girl and the day of my birthday arrived, my mother would wake me up at the exact hour as I was born—that time when the light breaks through the darkness of the long night.

She would be the first to greet me and embrace me with her magical love all while the light would shine me awake.

Each and every year, she would write me a card, always with a picture of a new flower. She even continued this tradition when I moved away from home.

But one winter was utterly different. It was the year when my mother took her last breath–and it was also the first year that I would have to celebrate my birthday without her greetings,

My most cherished wonder of winter, had been stopped blossoming forever.

I could only think of this dark morning to end.

But as the daylight broke through my window on that first birthday morning without my mother, I surprisingly noticed that her presence was there… In fact, it was everywhere. All of the particles in that morning ray of light were infused with a rare beauty and reminded me of my mother’s warmth and love.

I came to think of a box I had stored under my bed after she had passed away. I recalled that it was full of letters– and also of all my birthday cards from my mother.

It was amazing to open this present from the past. I was reading all of her birthday greetings again!

As I was about half way through, I noticed a little book, one that I had never payed much attention to before. It was my mother’s calendar from the year when I was born. A dried flower, a winter aconite, had been placed between two pages; one of them the date of my birth. And she had written a poem:

”The winter aconite is slowly streching herself alive

She is awakened by the light

It is time for her to leave her vase .

The baby blossom in my belly will soon be streching herself alive too

I wonder what flower she will be?

Like an echoe of the future

It is as if she pleads

Mother, will I not forever be?

My dear child

We are only here to blossom for one day

To flower and unfold

One day our petals shall vanish too

But our birth is a blossoming moment

It is beyond time and eternity

It will never cease to be.”

She had written a poem for me–and it had been written just hours before I was born! This was a magical birthday greeting and one that I had never seen.

I read this first greeting when I thought I had read my last and I also realized that I had an entire collection of birthday greetings I could read—an undying bouquet of blossoms to scent–every year.

My discovery of this greeting reminded me of the timeless cycle of life.

That first birthday without my mother, had really been so full of her—and her poem to the future from the past was not only a meaningful completion to my collection of birthday greetings.

It was a healing closure and the best present I had ever had.