This month was the third anniversary of Linda’s death. Each year, I have written Linda a letter on that day and sent copies to our friends and family. I send my letter to Linda’s old e-mail address, which I’ve kept alive. Once in the past three years, she got a letter there from a friend, telling her how much she was missed.

For the past several months, I have been writing this book. Linda has been on my mind more than ever. But, interestingly, it was nearly a week after this year’s anniversary of her death that I realized it had passed.

For the first two years, I experienced Linda’s spirit as real and outside myself, but clearly hovering around from time to time. She talked to me only once, asking me to make the effort to mend a broken friendship and to give away some of her treasures that were in storage. She told me that she was okay and not to worry about her. Since then, her spirit has moved more and more inside me. I see her less in the wind and in the sky and in the birds.

For four winters after Linda built this house, a little brown bird I named Gabriella
lived each night in the shelter of our front porch on a nail that holds up an iron
angel. This year, Gabriella did not return.