The Last Birthday Card

I didn’t go into Sarah’s room until the morning after the funeral.

The house had been so full of voices the past few days—whispers in the kitchen, soft cries in the hallway, the drone of condolences. Now, it was quiet. Just me, the lingering scent of lilac perfume on her pillows, and the silence of a life packed away too soon.

Her room looked the same as it did when she was here—neat, curated, warm. Sarah was always better at that sort of thing. She made spaces feel safe. There was no dust on her shelves, no clutter. Just books, carefully arranged by color, and a line of scented candles by the window. It felt wrong, how peaceful it looked.

I hadn’t planned to find anything. I just wanted to sit where she sat. Touch something she touched. But when I opened the drawer of her bedside table, I saw it.

A birthday card.

My name was on the envelope: To Emily. Written in her curly, always-too-big handwriting. There was no stamp. No postmark. Just a date on the back in pencil: April 5—my birthday. Four months ago.

She had already started chemo then. I remember that birthday. I remember the cake, the forced laughter. She had said she forgot to get me anything, and I said it didn’t matter.

I lied. It had mattered. But only because it wasn’t like her to forget.

I held the card for a long time. It felt heavier than paper should. Maybe it was the weight of something unfinished.

I didn’t open it right away.


---

The next day, I sat in the kitchen with the card in front of me and a mug of chamomile tea I wouldn’t drink. I stared at the envelope until the sun had shifted across the floor tiles and into the window again.

Finally, I broke the seal.

Inside was a handmade card—cut from thick watercolor paper. There was a painting of a daisy on the front. She used to paint flowers all the time.

Inside, the message was short. But her words never needed to be long.

> Happy Birthday, Em. I don’t have the energy to write a lot today, but I didn’t want this to go unsaid. I’m so proud of you. You’ve become everything I hoped you’d be—strong, kind, creative, and brave, even when you don’t feel it. I see it. I’ve always seen it. I know things are hard right now. But you’re going to be okay. Better than okay. You’ll shine in places I’ll never get to go. Just remember, I’ll still be watching.

Love you always,
Sarah.



My hand covered my mouth as the tears came. Not the slow, soft kind. The ugly, shaking kind that forces your whole body to curl inward.

She had written this when she was dying.

She had made time—in pain, in exhaustion—to write me a birthday card. And she never gave it to me.

Why?


---

That night, I went back to her room, card still in hand. I sat on her bed and tried to remember the last time we had talked about something that mattered.

I had spent the last months being useful. Driving her to appointments, managing the medications, answering calls. I thought if I stayed in motion, I wouldn’t have to feel the slow unraveling of her. I didn’t tell her about the new art show I had submitted to. I didn’t tell her about the promotion I’d gotten. I didn’t tell her I was scared.

Maybe she knew anyway. Maybe that’s why she wrote what she did.

Maybe she didn’t give it to me because she knew I wouldn’t have read it then. Not really. Not the way I needed to.


---

I remembered the daisy.

It was the same flower she used to paint when we were kids. When I was eight and she was twelve, she taught me how to hold a brush the “right” way. We sat on the porch with watercolor pads and peanut butter sandwiches. I painted suns and crooked rainbows. She painted daisies. Always daisies.

“They’re strong flowers,” she had said once. “They grow in cracks. In concrete.”

I had forgotten that until now.


---

The card became something I returned to in the quiet moments.

It didn’t bring me peace at first. It brought more questions, more ache. But slowly, it became something else. A conversation I hadn't known I needed. A final note in the key of love.

I carried it in my journal. Took it out when the days got too heavy. Read it before my first gallery show. Read it again the night I couldn’t sleep and ended up crying on the bathroom floor. Read it on what would have been her thirty-fourth birthday.

It didn’t fix the hole she left. But it reminded me of the shape of her—her voice, her care, her belief in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.


---

It’s been a year now.

I framed the card.

It sits on my desk beside a fresh-cut daisy in a jar. Every Monday, I replace it. It’s my ritual now—my way of keeping her alive in the ordinary.

Sometimes I wonder what she would say to me now. If she’d like the person I’ve become. If she’d laugh at the fact that I drink chamomile tea every night because “you need something warm before bed,” like she used to say.

I think she’d be proud. At least, I hope so.

But more than that, I know she was proud. Because she told me. In the last birthday card I ever received from her. And the only one I’ll never throw away.