Happy Birthday

When I was little I would spend all year waiting for October to come around.  And then when October did come I'd mark down the days until my birthday.  My little heart would be filled with anticipation as I would gaze longingly at the calendar, willing time to go faster.  Then my birthday would come, I'd turn another year older, and inevitably something bad would happen.  Some years it was something little- like no one would come to my birthday party.  Other years it was something big like someone would throw up on me (this one happened a lot.)  

Then I grew up.  And things got worse.  On my fifteenth birthday I was evacuated in a storm of wildfire.  A girl I knew (a friend of a friend) died in the wildfire.  I got older and we found out about another friend that I hadn't seen in years, who was shot in a drive by shooting around my birthday.  We did the math and discovered that my birthday was the day that one of my friends was almost a SIDS victim.  Every time I turned around something was happening.  And then last October a college buddy passed away.  That one was the worst.  

This week was the one year anniversary of Jon's death.  I tried not to let that minor detail affect me but I almost burst into tears at several points throughout the day.  It was bad enough before when I was the only one suffering but when everyone was... I felt so displaced.  I wrote my poem on grief that I've been mulling over and over again in my head this week.  I remember that I felt guilty being alive when he wasn't.  Now I feel guilty feeling happy about anything because he is gone.  I felt even worse feeling sad because things could be so much worse.  And then today I had a revelation.  I shouldn't look at it as Jon's death day... so much as his second birthday... a birthday into heaven.