Another year gone
I am 37 today. This is the first birthday in maybe forever where I realized just how loved I am. I received birthday greetings from friends and family across the globe. I spent the evening with some of my favorite people. I am fortunate. I don’t know if I’m more blessed this year, or if I’m just more appreciative. I suspect it’s the latter, both in that experience has taught me (brutally) to appreciate the good, and that I have healed enough in my grieving journey to be able to see and savor the good. A would like that; he was all about savoring.
This is my third birthday without him here, but A sent me a gift. There are these catalogs that are wholly connected to him, and they do not come regularly, and they do not come randomly. They come when I really, really need to hear from him, or for special occasions. It’s really uncanny; you don’t have to believe me. It’s enough that I believe. The one that arrived yesterday was from a company he bought my birthday present from in 2005. He also messed around with my iPod, playing DJ; he hasn’t done that in awhile. I felt him near today, a stronger presence than I’ve felt in awhile. I am loved.
I always liked the round 20 years that separated us. I like evenness and multiples of 10. I realized this morning that I was gaining on him now. We’re only 18 years and an infinity of distance apart now. I meet that fact with resignation, like so many others. There is no “over it”; I regularly shake my head at a reality that I do not understand and live with regardless. My understanding is evidently not required, however much it may be desired by me.
Tonight I sat and ate cake at my friends’ table in their new home, surrounded by boxes…my friend who, it seems, was the other reason I was meant to go that guitar camp in California…and she told us the story of her widowed grandmother, who felt her husband’s arms around her waist as she did dishes one night, and who saw the dog wagging his tail eagerly as he stared intently at the empty space behind her. And I know that it is not in all of our heads; that this is a UNIverse, where nothing is lost, and in that, there is hope and the strength to endure.