Birthdays and Deathdays
Jan. 22nd, 2009 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaWe start out with birthdays when we are very young. Some of our very first memories are birthday celebrations - our own and those of our friends and family. I have vivid memories not only of my own third birthday but of things that happened in preparation for it. In a large family birthdays are the highlights of the year - a personal Christmas with all the attention on you.
As we get older, at some point in our lives, we begin to add the mirror image of this celebration - the remembrance of the day someone we love dies. This happened for me in 1965 on my brother's fifteenth birthday - it was the day my father died. It's been over forty years now, but still, when the family meets to celebrate Michael's birthday, there is always a mention of Daddy's death, a remembering of that birthday/deathday now so long in the past.
Today is my friend Mark's birthday. We were born in the same year and started kindergarten together in 1959 at Takoma Park Elementary school (in a building that no longer exists), he in the afternoon class, me in the morning class. We've been friends a long, long time and can remember things together that no one outside my family has a clue about.
But for the last few years, celebrating Mark's birthday is always just a glance away from knowing that tomorrow is the day my brother John died in 2001. He was fifty-two and my big brother, but I'm older now than he ever got to be. Our birthdays were two days apart, in August, and as children we often celebrated together. Now I celebrate alone but always think of him on his birthday, and on his deathday, too.
As we get older, at some point in our lives, we begin to add the mirror image of this celebration - the remembrance of the day someone we love dies. This happened for me in 1965 on my brother's fifteenth birthday - it was the day my father died. It's been over forty years now, but still, when the family meets to celebrate Michael's birthday, there is always a mention of Daddy's death, a remembering of that birthday/deathday now so long in the past.
Today is my friend Mark's birthday. We were born in the same year and started kindergarten together in 1959 at Takoma Park Elementary school (in a building that no longer exists), he in the afternoon class, me in the morning class. We've been friends a long, long time and can remember things together that no one outside my family has a clue about.
But for the last few years, celebrating Mark's birthday is always just a glance away from knowing that tomorrow is the day my brother John died in 2001. He was fifty-two and my big brother, but I'm older now than he ever got to be. Our birthdays were two days apart, in August, and as children we often celebrated together. Now I celebrate alone but always think of him on his birthday, and on his deathday, too.
