It’s a chilly November morning, thirty-six years to the day that my daughter, Lydia, was born. December will mark twenty-one years since her death. “Anniversary” has a celebratory connotation that always causes me to wonder what to make of it. How to spend this day. Anniversaries are important page markers in the chapters of our lives and yet we are advised to let go of some of those that most define us. To skip over them searching only for the good parts. This day marks the anniversary of one of the best days ever, yet it’s heavy with sadness.
For a number of years, my sister sent a card on Lydia’s birthday. Although Lydia is dead, it is still, after all, her birthday. When I mentioned the card to a friend, she thought it odd. Cruel even. Thought my sister shouldn’t remind me. As though I could ever forget. As though I would ever want to forget.
I don’t know if I ever told my sister how much those cards meant to me. She has stopped sending them. The first year that passed without a card I cried and wondered if she’d simply forgotten. My sister though, is a rememberer of dates. I believe she thought it was time to stop.
Irene, one of my oldest friends—we met in kindergarten—still remembers Lydia’s birthday and sends a card letting me know. Today I sent her a note, using one of my coveted John Lennon postage stamps, to tell her how much I appreciate her friendship.
I am not one who remembers dates and have never been that thoughtful, so I have no right to expect such kindness from anyone, sibling or friend, but Irene’s card moves me to tears every year.
So how am I to deal with this contradiction of an anniversary? Shall I make a cake? How many candles? Fifteen for the years she was alive? Thirty-five for the years since she was born? Shall I buy her a gift? Shall I look through the boxes of photos of birthdays past, recalling the names of the invited guests and wondering what they’ve been up to all these years? Wondering if they ever think of her, I have a cup of herbal tea and decide to fast today.
This year, I am making an effort to not try to understand the reasons she took her life when it had just barely begun. It’s easy to say that I am thankful for the gift of her, but not so easy to always believe that. I wonder how my own life and my son’s would be different had we not loved and lost her. Had we never known the unfathomable pain of that loss.
I finally get dressed and leave the house because the dog is out of food. In the grocery store, a pumpkin pie catches my eye. I walk past, but it calls out to me. “Come back! It’s her birthday! She loved pumpkin pie.” I turn and walk back and the pie jumps into my cart. I buy things to make a large green salad.
When I get home, I eat three slices of pie with whipped cream because it is not a fast day it’s her birthday and damn it, I will celebrate that.
Some anniversaries come with no reason at all for celebration, and yet we mark them on our calendars and take care to commemorate the date. We wear poppies to remind us of the more than eight million dead in the Great War. We have National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day events. We assemble at ground zero on September 11. No one ever suggests that we “move on” and forget the terrible tragedy of these events. We are, in fact, considered unpatriotic if we fail to participate, or at the very least, post an appropriate meme, preferably containing a reference to thoughts and prayers, on social media.
Once this happy-sad-rapid-cycling day has passed, I will soon be faced with a far more abysmal anniversary. One of those with no possibility of celebration, though a yahrzeit candle will burn in my kitchen all night.
Some friends, other parents who have survived the loss of a child, refer to this as the Angelversary. I have not been able to think of it that way, although I suppose it might help if I could.
Many people though, will think it’s time to let it go. To move on.
As the twenty-first anniversary of my daughter’s death approaches, my neighbors decorate Christmas trees and bake cookies with their grandchildren. I will light her candle and find my way, once again, through the day without Lydia. I will come out intact on the other side of it.
Because her memory is a blessing.
