Happy Birthday My Dear Mother

Happy Birthday My Dear Mother, today you’d have been ninety-eight;
So on this special day of yours, your seventy-fifth I will relate!
Linda and I were snowbirds down in Florida, we rented a place to stay;
And we flew you in to be with us, for your most important day!
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What you didn’t know was about a party, in Ft. Lauderdale, at The Café de Paris;
With twenty people attending, just came for you to see!
We walked into the private dining room, they all called out “Surprise”;
We knew we’d made you very happy, by the teardrops in your eyes!
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Aunt Ruth and Uncle Milton, were in on this big gag;
We had seen them two days earlier, but they didn’t let the cat out of the bag!
There were many you did not know there, friends and clients that we knew;
But when you met them, they hugged you, and said, “Arlene, happy birthday to you”!
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You had the best of times there, just like the days from our treasured past;
If only Daddy had been there with us, and not eighteen years earlier passed!
Now, you have been gone for fifteen, I wish I could surprise you again today;
And throw you a great big party, on this, your ninety-eighth!
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                          Memories and Gold
                     Treasured but the former
                         Far more precious