A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
I was my Daddy’s favorite. Yeah, I know; parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but there you go. Sometimes I was a joy to him, sometimes a disappointment...but always close to his heart.
He teased me sometimes that I resembled no one so much as the mailman, left-handed, blue-eyed towhead that I was in a family full of right-handed, green-eyed brunettes, but we both new that in personality and talents I was really most like him.
We shared a birthday, he and I; not exactly by the calendar – his was March 6th, mine is March 7th – but in spirit. I’m told I was the one, at about age 6, who suggested we should merge our birthday celebrations, but I honestly don’t remember it. I do remember, though, a few of the cake-frosting combinations we had before Dad got wise.
We had a family tradition: the birthday person got to choose dinner, and pick the cake and icing. For our shared cake, one year I’d pick the cake and Dad would pick the frosting, the next year vice-versa. Dad learned to always, always let me choose first and make his choice to match. I think it was the coconut cake with strawberry icing that taught him this important lesson.
(Yeah...that's me with the Pebbles hair-bow thing going)
We’d celebrate the night of his birthday because it was between our special days – again my idea I’m told. And again, I don’t remember, but if I did suggest it I doubt it was from any sense of virtue. More likely I just wanted to open my presents a day early!
At my office, we do pot luck lunches to celebrate birthdays. I have a co-worker born on March 5th, and it took me years to convince them to not have the luncheon on the 6th, between our birthdays because celebrating on his day no longer felt right. And since Dad died, I simply can’t enjoy a cake on my birthday. Those close to me know not to make one.
I was 20 when he died. It’s been 27 years, and I still think of my Dad nearly every day. He’s still alive in my dreams, interacting with folks he never lived to meet, like his granddaughter now 13. But I never miss him more than on our birthdays.
OT: This diary brought to mind another family birthday story that triggered both laughter and tears. My kid brother, lost to us last summer, requested the following meal for his 4th or 5th birthday: “That round stuff that Mommy makes square.” We puzzled and pondered, all of us, for a couple of weeks before his birthday trying to figure out what he wanted. By the days before we were almost frantic. Finally, on the day, my Mom got it and Frank got his birthday meal.
Challenge for the reader: it’s nothing exotic, an extremely common food. What is “that round stuff that Mommy makes square?” Answer in the tip jar – no peeking!