Today is the birthday of Don Shepherd.
(November 6th. This was written yesterday.)
He would have turned 57. Im pretty sure. Ive lost track.
Does it even matter? A decade after his sudden death, do the numbers really matter?
Yes. I suppose.
And also, not really.
Ten years into this life-altering loss, the concept of time seems almost imaginary to me. Years are more like weeks, and minutes are more like decades. There are days where it feels like “that life” was just around the corner, while other times, it seems so very far away, and I wonder if it was something that perhaps I invented in my heart, and maybe it never really happened.
All I know is this – today I felt like honoring and recognizing and celebrating my husband’s short life. I made some of his favorite foods for dinner, and me and my husband Nick toasted with root beers, enjoyed some ravioli and garlic bread, and ate some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.
I shared a few funny and lighthearted stories about my dead husband, with my very much alive husband. We played Don’s all-time favorite album: “Toys in the Attic”, during dinner. We laughed at how many times the song Don famously hated: “Livin on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi, came on the radio over and over today. He watched silently as I held the small box of ashes to my chest, and hugged it tightly in a moment of remembrance and ceremony. He listened as I expressed again how I’ll never be okay with Don Shepherd no longer being on earth, and how I will keep living my life with meaning and intensity, because Don doesnt have that option. He held me when the sadness came, and when the crying began, and when I told him that I feel incredibly grateful for this life, filled with joy, and unbelievably sad – all in the same breath.
This is what loss looks like and feels like after ten years.
I have a hard time putting it into words sometimes, because it is so layered and complex and “what the hell is this anyway?”
Today, on Don’s birthday of who cares how many years old, I know that I am forever altered by the life and death of my dear, dead husband. I know that I am capable of loving Nick fiercely and profoundly and without apology, because I was so well-loved by Don. I know that love creates more love, and that people who die always stay with us, every time we share their stories. I know that as long as I live and much, much longer – it will never be right or fair or make any damn sense to me that Don Shepherd won’t experience any more seconds of having the great honor of being alive. Most of all, I know that I don’t know a thing about what really happens once we leave this human form, but energy cannot be destroyed and neither can love, so both must go on forever.
Don is in pieces of the moon, the night sky, that bright orange autumn leaf, the strum of a guitar, the crash of a wave, the purr of my kitties. He is near me every time I drink a root beer, or watch a Yankees game, hear beautiful music, or laugh so hard that my back hurts for hours. He is there for all of that, and more.
Now lets not pretend that any of this is even close to the same thing as having him here for real. It’s not. It never will be. It sucks.
But it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.
Happy Stardust Birthday, Don.
Thank you, a billion times over, for all the love you gave me, that I am now able to share forward, forever. It is everything.
Love grows love.
