My Last Birthday

Well this girl is now 29 years old!

I celebrated my birthday by cleaning house. My good friend, confidant, therapist and lets face it someone that I honestly know I couldn't have survived the last 6 months without, came over and helped me get my house picked up and clean for my birthday. She brought me a basket full of sunshine, cute little trinkets, lip balm, lemon drops and smell goods, perfume, bodywash, yellow sunflower shaped loofah, and air freshener.  She played therapist and listened to me grieve, on more than one occasion. We are kindred spirits and I am so very grateful for her.

My little sister and niece came over and they helped make apple butter and and then Anna tweezed my eyebrows while another friend stopped by with her son. Bringing me two lovely yellow roses and she stated they are yellow roses because we are FRIENDS!

I had to take Grace down to The Ex  and as we were preparing to go I was doing a few last minute clean up things in the kitchen while Grace readied to go and I looked at the clock on the stove like I had a thousand times before and saw that it was 5 :24 pm and I instantly thought, "Chase should be home any minute, I wonder what he has planned for us." And then reality caught up with me, threw me to the ground as hard as it could and stomped on me. It took me a moment to catch my breath but the crazy thing is, I did.

So we headed to Fruit Heights to drop Grace off and after that my mom Henry, Si and I ran over to my cousins new-to-them 1940's home in Bountiful, its cute and quirky and I know that his lovely wife (and designer of this blog) will make it into a wonderful and lovely home. They were gracious enough to send us home with a box full of peaches, that I believe are destined to become filling of a belated birthday cake and a peach jalepeno jam.

By 9:30 I realized I hadn't eaten anything the whole day and decided I probably should. We enjoyed dinner at Pei Wei. Had a touching conversation with a cook. His name was Anthony and he was enamored with Silas, he had the look of a man that was fascinated by babies. He admitted that he and his wife were expecting their own on Halloween, and then as he looked at my boys I could see heartache surfacing.  He pointed to a tatoo on his arm, angel wings and a name. He told us of a son that he and his wife had lost at 31 weeks, my heart broke for him and I teared up. I told him that Henry had been born with a birth defect and I could relate to being in awe that any child is ever born healthy. We discussed the loss of his son and the awful process that it was and then my mom looked at me as if asking permission. She told him that I had just lost my husband nearly 6 months ago and just had this baby a month ago.

It never ceases to amaze me that somehow people that are grieving seem to find one another. I have had several experiences as of late of people that seem to be drawn to me and vice versa, and we come to find that we share a common thread, grief although completely different types seems to draw us closer together. Anthony wished me a happy birthday, handed me a gift card for my next visit and we both wished each other well.

 We headed home exhausted from the pursuits of our day.

I had just finished feeding Silas and was getting into bed when my phone rang. Four minutes until midnight.  It was my father calling from work. "I wanted to be the LAST one to wish you a happy birthday," he said and then told me he remembered the day I was born and how excited he was to have a daughter. I could relate to that excitement because my excitement about Silas arriving a month ago is still so fresh. He also told me he loved me and that he was proud of me! Now my dad does use the word proud very often, the whole not being prideful thing (this is said in good humor) but he told me he was impressed with how I have handled all that has come my way not only this last year but throughout my life. He said, "My grandma would say You've got grit!"

*I cried, I cried a lot!*

All in all, it was not the worst birthday I have ever had, that's a whole other story and one I'm not up for reliving at the moment but it probably was the hardest one. But, I survived. Heck, I have even made it through another day of being 29 and the world hasn't ended!

One day, one moment, one instant at a time. Its been almost 6 months that I've made it through. I have found recently that I can do hard things, even when I don't want to. I have 3 wonderful children that are fairing pretty well because I keep going and haven't given up even when I wanted to.

I have yet to have a year of my life I would ever want to repeat but I'm 29 now and since Chase will forever be 29, I'm hoping that 29 is pretty good for me because I'll be repeating it from here on out bring on 29A...29B...29C etc.