Secret Message

I yearn so much to hear from my mother, even one last time. I actually do hear her in the laughter of my children, in birdsong, in my grandmother's voice...but I fantasize about her leaving one last message, just for me, with the wisdom of the dying. I wanted some secret transmission directly to my eyes and ears on my birthday, the first without her.
One of those last days, at her house, she did murmur that she wanted to tell me something. But she didn't finish the thought. Or maybe she did, and I didn't recognize it. 
I've dreamed two dreams over the past week about a message from her. In one, she was dying, and I asked her to call my phone and leave me a message for later. This was probably the night after I did listen to the last voicemail she left me, telling me how she was feeling but that there was nothing to be worried about. In the second dream, the book I ordered with my birthday checks - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, hardcover - came with an inscription from her, rambling about dying wishes and practical arrangements with tenderness. 
I almost - almost - expected a birthday card from her. Not mailed from beyond, but signed and delivered by advance arrangement. And when it never came I realized that (of course!) if she had planned not to be here, she would have found a way to make sure I got a card from her on my birthday. But all the things she didn't do - birthday card, final arrangements, updating her will, writing down her email password, for goodness' sake - meant that she never planned not to be here. Dying wasn't in her plan. All the things she did in the last few months were rooted in the intentions of living. She didn't waste a precious second on death.
That is what these acts and omissions mean to me. My mind has put them all together in this pattern. But my heart isn't there yet...my heart breaks on a Sunday morning, on a three day weekend, screaming inside how will we fill these hours without her? These days? These long years ahead without my mother's touch? My heart quails at the long years of motherhood, of life, that I have to walk without her. That would feel less lost without some words to guide them by.