Today, my dear and sweet husband, you are not 51.
Today is your birthday. You are not here.
You cant eat cake or blow out candles or makes jokes about getting older and how time flies.
You can’t go and see the new “Peanuts” movie with me, our favorite, which comes out today, on your birthday.
We can’t joke around about how you will always sit and wait in the pumpkin patch with me , forever, just like Sally did on Halloween night with Linus.
We cant share popcorn today, or share a large root beer that I would only take two sips of and you would drink all the rest.
Today is your birthday, and you are not 51.
Today is your birthday, sweet husband. But you will not be coming home to mom and dad’s with me next weekend, in Massachusetts, to finally celebrate my birthday, my brothers, sister in laws, and my parents; who both turned 70 in July. You will not be taking your car into my parents driveway to wash it, and you will not be able to wash my mom’s car too, like the awesome son-in-law that you always were to them. You won’t be having conversations with my dad about baseball, or having a game of catch in the yard with my brother, and you wont be enjoying whatever awesome food my mom has waiting for us, which is always way too much and feels like home.
Today is your birthday, and you wont be able to see how much our nephew Brian has grown, or how funny he has become. You wont ever meet our adorable niece Jillian, and she won’t ever know you. You can’t ever be a dad yourself, and we can’t have all the things that we were supposed to have together – like a house or children or new careers or changes or life. We can’t have life.
Today is your birthday. But you are not here. Not in the way that I want you to be. Not in the way that has meaning on someone’s birthday.
I hope that people won’t say cliche and silly things to me today such as: “Happy Birthday to Don in Heaven!”, or “He is celebrating and eating cake with the Angels in Heaven! He is having a party!” I don’t believe those things, and I know that you would find those things to be silly and mock-worthy. I can just hear you now, laughing with your shoulders as you say: “Pssshhh. What am I celebrating? I’m DEAD!”
Yes, sweet husband, your memory lives on. Our love lives on. Your soul lives on. Your energy is out there, in the universe, and in my heart, and you will live inside the rhythms of everything that I do. You will never be forgotten, because I will not let that happen. Never while I am still breathing.
But, you are not here. You are not breathing.
It is not okay.
I will live with it, because I cannot change it.
But it is not okay.
Today is your birthday, and you are not 51.
Instead, you are forever 46, and I’ll be seeing our movie alone.
I love you.
