Happy Birthday my beautiful Stephanie!

Your birthday was always so close to the Christmas holidays that it kind of got mixed together with the whole Holiday spirit, but now that you’re gone, it just sort of looms over the Holidays because I know that it’s coming up quickly.  We had a very nice Christmas Holiday this year, but in the back of my mind I was thinking of you and bracing myself for the fact that your birthday was coming up shortly.  Now it’s January 7th, and you would have been 22 today, and I’m facing the hard facts that you’re not with us anymore.  It truly never does get easier.  I can’t imagine that it will ever get easier, in fact.  It’s always hard, and it gets even more difficult on your birthday and the anniversary of your death each year.

You would have had a lot of  fun here in LA with us, as I know how much you loved the sunshine and the beach.  We live near the ocean, and I’m sure you would have visited us often.  Perhaps you even would have appealed to move back home with us for a while… I would have pretended to put up a protest and that you should be out on your own, and in college, but I would have secretly loved to have you back home for a while again.

I miss you very much, and think of you every single day.  I just wanted you to know that.

I love you!!!

Dad