All By Itself

My mother would have have been eighty-six in October. She was smart and beautiful, though, I don't think she knew. Today, I wonder where she is and in what form. Is she in the tree outside my window? Has she created her own version of heaven on some corporeal plane? Or has she gone beyond all that? Is part of what my therapist calls, "The Great Love?" I want her essence to be separate, at least some of it. Her laugh. She laughed sometimes until tears ran down her face. Would literally pitch forward with the force of it. Nothing like watching a strong woman absolutely surrender. I want her laugh back. I want it to exist somewhere, not in a tree, all by itself.