Setting up my office this morning, I carefully unwrapped the white packing paper that protected one of my most precious belongings. It’s a photograph of my parents and me in Florida, a year or two before my mother passed in 1999. Framed with it is a newspaper clipping of a poem, copyrighted 1984.

I have no memory of the clipping, but I do remember how I found it. Back in 2001, I was sitting on my living room floor in San Jose, Calif., sifting through boxes I hadn’t unpacked in years. I lifted a folder and this clipping slipped out to the floor.

It was the only thing that dropped out of what really was a random folder in a random box. I have no memory of how it got there.

Here’s the poem:

I am always here
to understand you
I am always here
to laugh with you
I am always here
to cry with you
I am always here
to talk to you
I am always here
to think with you
I am always here
to plan with you
Even though we
might not always
be together
please know that
I am always
here to
love
you

On it, my mother had handwritten, THIS IS PERFECT!

Yes, mom, it is. It’s perfect. It surely is.

But I still miss you.