December.

My mom's address book sits here on the dining room table. I'm helping my dad with a little project and while I have yet to get started on it, I've flipped the pages of the address book two or three times now.

It's not the people listed that I'm curious about, it's not who she sent cards to or who sent cards back that matters. It's the methodical shape of the letters.

As a child I saw her writing and viewed it as the epitome of "mom" writing. Never sloppy. Always perfect. Whether cursive or printing it always fell in a straight line, each letter exactly as it should be on the paper.

There was a never a rushed look or feeling to it even if I saw her scribble the words down quickly.

I page through the book and I see each and every name and address listed perfectly in it's space. White out to make the changes when friends have moved, or names added as family expanded.

In the back, twelve pages for dates to remember, one for each month, birthdays, anniversaries and then a few key notes to my dad. Things I know she wrote near the end but not near enough that her writing was blurred yet.

There are just a few spots where you can see in the shape of a letter or a number, her pen didn't hit the paper just right and the combination of the cancer and the treatment make it look looser and less together than she'd ever been.

But few and far between are those.

I think of her sitting two years ago now paging through making sure each and everyone of her loved ones receives one last Christmas card.

Just weeks. Days.

Before the end.

And on the last page, just before the cover, the last month of the year, December.

There on the page amidst all the other December birthdays and anniversaries is one addition in what one can only call my dad's best writing. Miss E.

Making what would maybe seem like something sad and full of reminders of a loss, a reason to smile.