I recently celebrated the passing of another grand and glorious year, or as one of my Facebook friends stated, another lap around the sun.  I don’t really mind birthdays that much, even if it does mean I’m a year older (actually, just a day older since an entire year did not pass from the time I went to bed until I arose).  Older is perfectly acceptable since I know what the only other option is.

This particular year the anniversary of my birth fell on a Sunday, a coincidence that had both its positive and negative points.  The final song before the message (at least I think it was the final song before the message) was “The Greatest Command”.  If you aren’t familiar with it, the altos (that’s me) begin the song.  On the second verse, the bass joins in, singing totally different yet complementary words and notes.  The tenors make their presence known on the third verse and the final verse adds the sopranos; each part is different yet they all blend beautifully, sending chills up my spine every single time.

But today that song brought far more than chill bumps.  We sang that song at my father’s funeral and it was especially beautiful then.  A friend of mine even commented on the singing afterwards, telling me how wonderful it was.  But on this particular day—my birthday—it brought me anything but joy.  I know my nose turned a dozen shades of red and it took all the will power I could muster not to cry . . . or leave . . . or cry and then leave.

After my mother’s death a friend of mine warned me.  You may think you will miss them most at Thanksgiving or Christmas or on their birthday, but that won’t be the case.  You will miss them most on your birthday.  And she was right.  For as long as I could remember after I went to college and then married, the phone would always ring bright and early on my birthday and my hello would be met with the traditional birthday song, performed by my parents.  It didn’t matter that I might be seeing them in an hour or two; I was still serenaded via AT&T.  Even after my father’s mind and body began to fail him, that phone still rang and they still sang . . . until he no longer could.

My phone had not rung that morning, as it has not for several years.  There was no “happy birthday to you” in my father’s wonderful tenor and my mother’s quivering soprano.  And “The Greatest Command” was a painful reminder of what I had lost.  Grief will do that to you, sneak up on you and whisper “Boo” in your ear when you least expect it.  My mother died over seven years ago and my father almost six, but I know enough to know that time, although the great healer, does not erase the scars.  There will always be those moments when something will trigger that response, when my nose will turn a dozen shades of red as I struggle to maintain some semblance of composure.  But I will deal with the devil known as grief and accept that his sneak attacks will probably continue for a very long time.  It simply means I loved and was loved.

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