Another Year Around The Sun

Thirty-two.

Birthdays are different after loss. There’s a family member absent at the table. One less person to cut a slice of cake for. One smile missing from the photographs taken around the fire on winter nights.

Birthdays are different when simultaneously grieving and healing. It’s the sacred dance of sorrow and joy; the rebuilding of a life that’s now completely shaken up and sometimes unfamiliar – to those witnessing your journey, but especially to yourself. This does not make it entirely terrible – it just makes it different.

You’re different now.

Loss ricochets like a bullet, cutting through every sphere of your life: your identity, your relationships, your faith, your daily habits and routine, the way you laugh, the way you cry. It leaves nothing untouched.

Losing a child – that’s a wound no parent fully recovers from. But no good parent would ever forget one of their children, no matter the age at the time of loss. No matter the time that passes.

This brings its own sad sweetness. All the unlived years span before you. The unfulfilled dreams wait at every corner as you remember the milestones your child could have reached. You get older, but your child remains the same: innocent, young, untainted.

The loss leaves scars unseen to the naked eye, but they’re there. You feel it when you catch a familiar scent, when you see tiny hands and feet, when you drive past the local nursery. It’s blended, morphed and intertwined so deep within your soul that it’s there even on the days that it’s as faint as a whisper. It’s there even when you try to choke it down.

Birthdays are different after loss. It’s not that you’re taking things for granted – in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Ageing brings a new meaning now.

While others complain about the wrinkles, the changing body, the number on the birthday card, you know the delicacy of those being pleasures your own was denied. You’re embracing the face that looks back at you in the mirror, knowing that your body carries stories that you did not welcome, but ones you no longer try to deny.

While others feel regret over what was not achieved by a certain age, you’re learning to live only in the present: soaking in the chaos, the monotony, the ebb and flow of every day life. You’re discovering that life was never a straight line, and the curves and dips have given you more richness than you’ve known prior to loss. You’re learning that this richness means that you can love deeper than before, if you let it. 

Every day you wake up is a gift you no longer take for granted. It’s not the postcard “seize the day” kind of living. It’s the raw, uncut, not-always-beautiful awareness that every day you breathe is another day you do so on behalf of the child who never got to. It’s the awakening that you keep going for the loved ones around you, and you keep going for yourself.

Each new day is a reminder of all the days you’ve wanted to stop moving, but you’ve fought hard to be here, showing up even though that looks strange and frightening at times.

It’s the realisation that the people still around you deserve your whole heart, even though that heart is battered and bruised and missing a piece. It’s surrendering the life you thought you’d have and unashamedly grabbing the life you do have.

You hold both tears and laughter in each hand, and you know that this is what makes you wholeheartedly human. You’re harder yet softer around the edges now. You’re weaker yet stronger. You take risks even though you’re afraid. You push yourself out of your comfort zone, because why not? You work harder, expect more, settle less. You’re braver now.

You have more to give to life because someone small taught you to fight harder than ever for love. And that love can radiate. It can reach deep down into the soil and grow new roots, and shoot up into the clouds and sprout new flowers. It can stir magic in new ways for new hearts that walk the earth. That love may have stripped you bare, but it has also made you whole. It brought out the woman in you.

Birthdays feel different after loss. But you’re different now.