Happy Birthday Mother

I love birthdays but then who doesn’t?  I’ve always loved my birthdays as they were always large affairs.  I spent a few hours every year surrounded by people who loved and adored me.  As I got older, I realized I was very naive.  My birthdays were memorable because of my mother.   I didn’t realize it until my 33^rd birthday.  I spent that birthday, writing in a journal and ranting at God because the doctor used the word “cancer” in the same sentence he had used to refer to my mother.  Cancer is something that happened to other people.  Not my mother.  

If she was scared, she never said.  If she was worried about the outcome, she never let it show.  I hated the fact that I was spending my birthday sitting in a hospital room with my mom.  When I got to her room that day, she told me happy birthday.  In that moment I realized the significance of birthdays.  A woman is first a daughter but if she’s lucky she becomes a mother and then maybe even a grandmother.  My son was two years almost and in that moment I realized that a birthday connects two people, the child who is born and the woman who births her.  

I wasn’t sure how I would manage this day.  It surprised me.  I got a card from a dear friend who reminded me that I am the best parts of my mother.  It was better than I would have hoped and I like to think that if she is indeed looking down from heaven she would approve.  We are fractured but healing will come with time.  I believe this now.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would not have had the faith.  

As I sit here writing this, I’m realizing that this is my new normal.  This year is coming to a close.  I spent rang in 2014 with my best friend.  I remember calling my mother and wishing her a Happy New Year.  I saw her in passing when I came back from Brooklyn.  I could regret it, but the writer in me sees only the foreshadowing of the events that transpired.  I will never share any birthdays with her.  There will never be any more new years for either one of us.  

Yet, I’m ok with that.  In part because I have to be, but in truth because as much as I miss her, she will always be an intricate part of me.  The beauty is slowly beginning to emerge from the ashes.