80 yr birthday

[Bernie]

You in person, and a handful of old photographs.

[labsnewfy]

^^^ this. I know our lives get busy and sometimes it is really hard to get away but your mom is turning 80. that would be a wonderful surprise for her with you being able to be there for her special day, if only for that one day.

[windycanyon]

^^^ this. I know our lives get busy and sometimes it is really hard to get away but your mom is turning 80. that would be a wonderful surprise for her with you being able to be there for her special day, if only for that one day.

Impossible. I may as well make a noose and hang myself if I left all my clients right in the middle of harvest. 2000 miles, folks! You can't do that in one day from where I live, btw....

[Abulafia]

Impossible. I may as well make a noose and hang myself if I left all my clients right in the middle of harvest. 2000 miles, folks! You can't do that in one day from where I live, btw....

Knowing where you live, I totally understand. You couldn't spend even a day there without three days lost in travel (and that's from the W part of our state!)

Let me think on it a bit. Both of my parents died in '98, my dad just a few months before my mom, and no, I don't think flowers would really be appropriate in the first year of (hardest) mourning. I know others have suggested this, but could you print out photos of your dad when young, her when young, early photos of them together, kids, grandkids (if there are any), and put them together in a really nice hand-done photo album? (Other family members might have photos they could scan for you, which you could then print out.)

And I mean old-school, with nice paper, you have to use photo corners to attach the photos, you can hand-write captions or dates or your own memories. Postcards from family trips, or old letters, cards, tickets (I used to collect train or other tickets when traveling, and put them in my journals), and so on.

This one is sort of stupid expensive, but I did a quick search and found it. Something like this:

Amazon.com: Large Genuine Italian Leather Bound Album, 100 Pages, Photo Squares Included, 13-1/8, Black

I have a couple like that (but not as fancy) that I've used to collect photos of trips, of family, etc.

You could write your own letter to her on the first page.

I think something along these lines would be lovely—my mother, at any rate, loved her photo albums, and always said that were there a house fire, they are the first thing (after us) that she'd save. The electronic photo frames are nice, but they photos flip through randomly and regularly, and ... you know. It's nice to be able to stare at one for a longer time, if you want to, and to flip back and forth between your favorites. Also: electronic technology breaks, and goes obsolete. Book technology is personal, individual, and lasting (I have several of my grandmother's albums, with photos from all over the world from the early part of last century, and I look at it a lot!).