birthday happiness

 today was my birthday.  I had recently deactivated Facebook and I’m afraid to admit that’s how I remember a lot of my friends birthdays because me and numbers and math are a bad combination.. 

I’ve often found that Facebook fills your feed with birthday wishes, and I think it’s because people feel obligated when they see  it’s your birthday. it was different to have a year where it was no obligations, and just the true people in your life that have your birthday in their memory or their date book.. and to be filled with text messages from the people that I would say are my diehards, wishing me happy birthday, because they truly remembered. from the friends that live afar and drive over to give a present or a cupcake. The neighbors that take care of the night and order the pizza. The people from the past, and the people from the present that just make your day so special. when I picked ed Jack up tonight, he had made me a card and it was probably one of my most favorite things of the day. His OT teacher helped to make it and on the back he put a unicorn. as I sit here tonight, alone in this apartment, that has held my space for a year I feel so amazingly blessed at the souls that have been in my life. . and I’m happy to say if anything happened to me in my life was cut short today made me realize how blessed I am, and that I am so happy and joyful for the people I’ve met and that’s all that matters.

Allowing the Grief to Drip

 I recently got a tattoo on my arm, I have an ocean theme and my artist added a shell that has drops coming off of it. One would think maybe they are ocean drops, or blood dripping?

At first I didn't like the drops, I just wanted the hard shell, pointy and rigid. Structured, strong, able to bounce off the ocean waves and protect its creature inside. The drops seemed out of place.

I just found out that someone very close to me lost their father in a tragic car accident. I had fallen asleep when I woke up to the text, my sleepy mind confused that I was dreaming and this wasn't real.

The flashbacks to two instances in the last five years of friends that tragically lost their parents and the helpless pit in your stomach feeling that ensues.

I hadn't met my friends father but I felt like I knew him through the stories that were told.  He lived on a big property that adjuncts to a waterfall in southern Ohio.  Coincidently I had just gone to those falls a year ago and never knew they existed. My son and I took gorgeous frozen waterfall pictures, capturing a moving force like a waterfall in ice is a beautiful ethereal experience I highly recommend.

My friend had just texted me the morning of the accident to ask if I wanted to go hiking on this property my next free weekend.  I was excited for the invite and the possibility of meeting his father.

This same morning I had also had been thinking about the fore coming death of my father and ex father in law as both are in frail states with the future unknown.

All of these weird synchronicities tied together make for this labyrinth of understanding what this all means in my head. We always try to make sense of grief and its the one thing that doesn't make any sense.

Its eb and flow nature, its ability to consume us, shut us down, question our beliefs and the world we live in.

Thinking back to my dripping shell, I've realized that even shells shed tears. Whether its when its creature leaves it for a bigger shell, or an abrupt storm smashes it into pieces on a rocky beach.  We need to shed our tears, we need to soften into the unknown.   We need to allow the grief to drip off our shells.