Today is my mom’s birthday. I wrote about her eight days ago, on Mother’s Day. She died July 3, 2006, after a hard fight with lymphoma and other unsolved mysteries. A few months later, my sisters began the bittersweet task of going through her things and discovering forgotten souvenirs and curious keepsakes in her home.

You will find images of one of them as you scroll.

My mom was a smart shopper. She bought when items were on sale, bought with coupons and stretched a dollar near its breaking point. She also bought in bulk those things she knew she’d be buying down the road. One such example, apparently, is birthday cards. One of the discoveries my sister made upon closer inspection of my mother’s living-room desk was, in a slotted organizer on the old-fashioned kind of desktop, a birthday card for a son. Because I have three sisters and no brother, we could assume the card was for me. She had to have bought it before April 9, 2006, the last day she saw her home before going to Houston for a fourth biopsy and further treatment. She never recovered from the complications of the biopsy, and she never came home.

The card pictured below was close to me, along with signed cards from family and friends, as I wrote about my mom and thought about her on my birthday that October. I wasn’t sure how long I would keep it within arm’s reach, but I knew I would keep it in my possession forever. I am not the pack rat my mother was; rather, I am a constant pruner. Not my mom. She saved everything, and her boxes of the greeting cards each of us sent her over the years are the proof. I wish I’d saved all of the cards she sent me, but along the way through many changes of address since then, all but one has disappeared. The one I have has no signature and no usual birthday wish. Memory tells me had she lived to send it to me, she would have written something along the lines of, “Hope you have a great birthday. Hang in there and know that we love you. God Bless You!! Love, Mom.”

My mother grew up in the Depression in a rural home with no indoor plumbing and, as hard as it is to imagine for someone living in the Deep South, with no air conditioning. She lived a harder life than I did, and her family didn’t make a big deal out of birthdays when she was a young girl. When she married and had four children, she tried to make our birthdays special. She let us choose the kind of cake she’d bake, and when I modified the custom by asking if she could just make me her small but addictive oatmeal cookies, she was fine with that.

On my birthday in 2006, I journaled that there was no doubt I would write much more about my mother. On that day, I mostly let the birthday card she’d bought for her only son speak for itself. It’s a good way to remember her, because it’s not elaborate, not expensive, not wildly funny or irreverent. It’s to the point, and the point is she loved her son. It’s sentimental, and thank goodness. Oh, she had a sense of humor, but birthdays to her were serious business. No messing around. Tell them you love them, and let them know you’re glad they were born.

Not long ago, I had occasion to buy a set of cards from a wonderful friend I met on Twitter, and whose blog, Slow Bloom, is one of my Bookmarks on the sidebar to the right of most pages on my website. Her blog has a Store page that shows the photographs she’s turned into cards and has for sale on her site.

I’d been keeping a mental list of people I wanted to send cards to, and I bought enough for each person on my list, plus a wild card, if you will, to send to someone yet to be determined. Jill being the terrific, generous soul she is, I discovered upon receipt of the package that she had given me a bonus card, Dahlia, in addition to the number I purchased.

That inspired me to prompt Jill to look up the word lagniappe, one of my favorite words from my days of growing up in and living much of my life in Louisiana. If you know the meaning of the word, you know that lagniappe is what Jill gave me along with the items I purchased.

I liked the Fushimi Inari Shrine photo so much, I’d wanted a handful of cards with that image. Jill was kind enough to honor that request, and I was thrilled to receive a full set of that one.

In the time between placing the order and receiving the cards, I found out someone I know was going into the hospital and would spend several days in a medically induced coma. That reminded me of the last month of my mother’s life. For three weeks or so, she was on a ventilator, and the doctor put her in a drug-induced coma because it makes being on the ventilator less traumatic and more tolerable for the patient.

Because Jill gave me an extra card, I now had one to send to everyone on my list, plus the wild card, plus one for the person in the hospital, for when he would be taken out of the coma. He was awake a few days later and returned home to a stack of cards sent by people who care about him. He faces a tough fight, but the odds are in his favor, so we’re all encouraged.

It occurred to me, while thinking about him being on a ventilator — like my mom was for most of the 19 days I spent with her in the hospital nine years ago — that I still had an extra card here. I’m going to set it aside, with nothing written on it, and I’m going to believe that my mom, somehow, will know it’s for her. She’d like the story of how it came to me, knowing about the lagniappe. My mom did love to get good value for her money, and an extra card — well, that would have made her day.

The card will remain blank, but this blog post can be the virtual inscription.

I’m leaving the card blank to be a twin of sorts of the last birthday card she bought for me —  no stamp, no signature, nothing written … but much love. I have the rest of my life to read whatever I want to on the white spaces of the inside pages. Extra lagniappe, if you will.

Happy birthday, mom. We miss you.