first (heavenly) birthday
What is it like, sis, your first heavenly birthday? I hope yours includes a to-die-for lobster tail dinner, maybe a strawberry daiquiri, something decadent for dessert. I'd like to think you're celebrating with Mom and Dad, and Aunt Hon, and your grandparents, and your puppy Brindy. Maybe you have a clubhouse suite seat for the Flyers game we're watching right now -- holy shit, they just tied it up! -- and thinking of you. (You'd love this one for all the fights.)
Down here on this broken earth, you would be 54. Are you 54 up there? I'm thinking they count their trips around the sun differently. I drove into work today blasting your boy Tim McGraw. You like the stories in his songs, you once said, and today he was telling me that if I found myself missing you I should look up and know you're not that far away because you're sleeping in the stars, watching, smiling, singing out in the silence. Do you see me doing exactly this when the sun hits a certain way, and at night when I’m taking out the trash, and when the clouds move? I’d like to think you do.
It’s the smallest bit of small comfort, for you're so damn missed down here on this March 30 -- an auspicious date, your birthday AND the same date I (and my husband!) was due to make my own entrance in this world. I hit snooze a bit longer. We were all born in the same place and we could have been partying it up in Nazareth Hospital’s nursery, finding our way together, doing this life at the same time.
Photo by me, taken in Key West, Florida where me and my best friend (we called each other sisters) celebrated our 50th birthdays in April 2019.