The First Birthday Without Him

"We know we are getting old when the 

only thing we want for our birthday is not 

to be reminded of it."

Anonymous

 Dear Lloyd,

Your birthday is rapidly approaching, and even knowing how much you hated birthday celebrations, hated anything that brought you attention and put the spot light on you, it is still and will always be a special day for me.  After all, if you were never born, I could not have met you.  If I had not met you, I suppose perhaps I would have fallen in love with someone else, but I would not have the children and I would not have the life your love helped to form.  And would they have loved me as you did with a love so solid you could almost reach out and touch it? Some things you just never know.  We make the decisions we make, for better or for worse, and they shape our lives.

It has been unseasonably warm, love, but it is starting to get chilly at night.  I don't believe that I have ever had to turn the furnace on or filled the wood stove in the morning when the cold came and chill air snaked through our home for over thirty five years.  When we heated with wood, I would hear the rustling sounds of your movements while I snuggled, only half conscious,  beneath a warm blanket in the bed you vacated only after gently kissing my cheek or my forehead, the bed we bought at the sale barn because we could not afford to buy new.  I remember the smell of you, how your breath would tickle, warm and moist. It is a funny thing about your kisses, how they could range from gentle to burning hot depending upon the circumstances.  How I miss those touches.

When we began heating with a furnace, more than hearing I remember the smell the furnace has when it first gets turned on in the fall.  Always I knew that your doing this was a sign of your love, of your protection: that your care-taking was an extension of and expression of your love. Actions were always so much easier for you than words. You always seemed to feel that words left you more vulnerable.

Always I appreciated it and reciprocated in different ways:  my failed coconut cream pies that you loved so, biscuits that could have been used as ammunition.  You always mastered things so easily whereas I often struggled along, but the effort more than satisfied you.  Your eyes told the tale. You had that odd talent of being able to look beyond the action or the result of the action to the intention behind it. I hope and think you know that I understood and was appreciative. Like the Joni Mitchell song, "Papa brought home the sugar, Mama taught me the deeper meaning."  You see, love, it was not the action itself, but the love that fueled the action.  Thank you for letting me be selfish and stay in the warm bed while your feet hit the cold floor and your skin felt the chill you shielded me from.  This year I will have to turn the furnace on myself. 

Tiffany said she is going to spend your birthday with me.  She did this without being asked which makes it all the more special.  What else would I expect?  She is, after all, your daughter.  Hopefully, she does not feel obligated but wants to spend time with me.  I know the children worry about me, particularly since my break down at Arlington Cemetery where I had to leave and tears careening down my cheeks.  You would scold me, I know, for you never liked for me to be unhappy and you thought it foolish to mourn the dead, those loved ones gone from us.  If we believe in heaven, they are in a better place.  And I witnessed first hand how much pain you had those last years. I know, love, it is selfish of me.  But sometimes I just can't help it.  I just miss you so. You helped to raise fine children though I STILL would have liked a third child despite the fact we really could not afford it ( you got won that disagreement.)

I'll be okay, love.  Wait for me.  Enjoy the company of those that came before.   And Happy Birthday!

Love, Melissa