Your birthday

 It is your 41st birthday soon, so I pose the question to Luca and Lottie about what we should do to mark the occasion.

Here is how the conversation goes with Lottie, who is now 5:

-Lottie, shall we have a cake for dad's birthday? - I ask.

-But, I don't have a daddy. - she replies

-Yes, you do.

-Where is he?

-You do know he is dead right? - I answer slightly taken aback 

-Then why have the cake if he is not here. - she replies and resumes her play.

This is more or less the template for conversations I have with my children. I prepare myself, I assume I have the necessary answers but they come up with things that just disarm me. So, why indeed have a cake for someone that is no longer here. My main answer is because it is important to me that Julien is celebrated, that his life is marked and that we connect to him in whatever way that feels right for us.

However, there is more to it. Ritual and celebrations give us a sense of control and belonging, the two things that desert us in widowhood, even if I only connect with Julien in my psyche. In a weird way it may help me feel less lonely. His birthday is something that I want to celebrate because is joyful, and because we shared a life together, his legacy living on through our memories.

I will borrow from Viktor Frankl's work, I am trying to make meaning out of the suffering, can I preserve some joy despite loss and grief. I want to give meaning to his life and everything that he meant to us.

I have decided that I don't want to mark the day of his passing, like a groundhog day of misery. It serves no purpose, but the birthday is different, it is life and happiness and light. 

I should add that Julien's birthday will not be entirely joyful it is a day peppered by sadness, the milestones that will never be achieved, the very fact that we will not grow old together and he will not be a participant in our children's lives. Let's not diminish loss, it hurts to eat a cake alone, it hurts that I will not fret over what to buy him or what to write in a card. Julien was always amazing in making my birthdays specials. This is  yet another loss, I can't celebrate his birthday and he cannot celebrate mine. Is this what secondary loss is? You also grieve for the things they will not do.

You see the world going on around you, business as usual for most families and yet you have to navigate all these complications, a birthday without the birthday boy,  the Christmas without the dad, the football without the man, the holiday for 3 instead of 4, the side of the bed that was theirs and it is now empty. 

So, for a widow it is not business as usual, this is life at its most heartbreaking, the person is gone but they are emotionally present in your heart.