Celebrating an anniversary of any kind can be bittersweet, but especially so if your special day also marks an experience of loss. I’ve always been awkward about birthdays, but I compounded awkwardness with awfulness thirteen years ago by getting married on my birthday. It was a glorious day. If we could have measured our future happiness in sunshine, the odds for us were good. But celestial harbinger aside, the relationship was probably already teetering on demise and the legalities of marriage erroneously perceived as a safety net.
Our first anniversary indicated the choppy waters ahead. I was inclined to celebrate my birthday with my children but my husband felt it was our special day and should be a private adults only fest. Our Paper Anniversary also coincided with my fortieth birthday, the highlight of which turned out to be eating most of the chocolate courgette birthday cake that recreated our wedding cake, in the bath in a private festival of tears. Anniversary Cotton resounded to arguments. Anniversary Leather was reclaimed as a birthday with a girls-only trip to family friends where my youngest daughter was instructed in the art of walking by their teenage son and I was plied with champagne and sushi.
Like a birthday cake, grief has layers and this year, one of the layers I am particularly in touch with, is the ending of this friendship. Unrelated to birthdays or wedding anniversaries, this long term treasured friendship hit unexpected stormy seas, and today, on my birthday, I am missing the convivial banter and bubbly and the shared memories of years gone by.
On Anniversary Linen, I suggested we celebrate our marriage on the day it was solemnised, and I choose a different day to mark the moment I emerged from the womb. It was when this generous accommodation of behaviour more suited to a toddler than a grown man was met with derision, that I couldn’t keep denying that the marriage was doomed.
It wasn’t until Anniversary Iron, however, that I celebrated alone with the children in a house lent us by friends after a middle of the night exit from the marital home was made necessary by an angry man banging lights on and shouting a few months prior. Why oh why did I go back? The inner workings of a psyche stretched to the quick is not logical. And, the provision of support for women in my situation, thin on the ground in these remote corners of Scotland. Return was necessarily followed by another leaving and Anniversary Bronze was celebrated, if that is the correct way to describe it, with a Restraining Order.
With the marriage undeniably in ruins, my birthday still marks a cycle of challenge. My fiftieth was full of hope - in a house I thought was the beginning of a retreat centre and the unfolding of my life’s purpose, surrounded by all four of my daughters and my beautiful soul sister visiting with her children. I opened my little shop feeling that was the proper place to celebrate half a century given it was a symbol of my independence and an endeavour I had poured my heart into.
The twelve months that followed were not kind.
Fifty-one was veiled in tears. I find it hard to recall the details. In the months preceding my birthday, I had wondered if I would survive the trashing of my dreams. Suicidal fantasies did not prevail, however, and I have lived to see 52. The existential crisis that came hard on the heels of being wrenched from the life I thought was unfolding in the aftermath of separation, has shaped most of the intervening year.
While the phoenix has risen, I’m mindful that planning an overly jolly birthday celebration is likely to be too taxing. The expectation to be visibly happy for 24 hours is too much when the heart still feels tender.
So this year, I’m celebrating my birthday in segments. My three youngest daughters prepared a beach breakfast for me and put together the sweetest furoshiki lunch pack with Greek salad and a QR code for a guided meditation. While they went off to play sports, I headed to my favourite meditation spot with my birthday lunch package and singing bowl where I’ve chanted and cried. I’ve cried for things irretrievably lost, for broken dreams and shattered hopes. I’ve also cried in gratitude for the children who, every year, make my birthday special, for the friends who have stayed the course, for the Meadowsweet and Ragged Robin that bloom in my meditation spot. Afternoon cake, a siesta and evening BBQ will finish the day. In a few weeks, we’ll have a party and micro disco separated in time from the day itself making it easier to enter the spirit of birthday and a future trip to my oldest daughter’s will be the perfect excuse for more cake and candles.
Anniversaries are delicate things. It’s imperative that we put our own unique needs at the heart of them and allow ourselves the pendulum of emotions. For me, this year has been a quiet birthday, but it has met all my needs for celebration, family and acknowledgment. I will remember long into the future my daughters’ ingenuity in devising a present that allowed me the moment of reflective solitude I needed on a day fraught with painful memories.
If you too are navigating anniversaries overshadowed by grief, use my calendar link to book a free call with me to discover how the Grief Recovery Method can help you meet your needs for self-care.
Kommentarer