Yesterday we gathered in our daughter’s back yard with family and friends to celebrate Zane’s 31st birthday. I found it hard to smile and celebrate a ‘happy’ birthday to a situation that is anything but happy. Then I read somewhere that birthdays are a way to celebrate the number of years that this person has been. Period.  Their birth brought their soul here in a physical form. Death removes only the body. Their soul is still alive and well. It is the soul we celebrate. I liked this advice. Zane was killed at 26 but his soul has been with us now for 31 years. 

So, every year I create something that celebrates Zane, a simple activity that his friends can do to help honor his spirit. The first year we handed out pay-it-forward cards, asking his friends to buy a stranger a drink and give the card to the recipient so they knew why they had received a free drink.  The second year we wrote wishes on ribbons and tied them to the tree that Zane had planted when he was in grade three. The third year was Zane’s 30th birthday and we had a bingo game made, each square listing an activity that Zane enjoyed, challenging his friends to complete the 30 squares over the year for Zane. This year with many of his friends now traveling for a holiday or a destination wedding, we bought luggage tags with a picture of Zane, asking them to take “Zane along on their adventures” and send us back a picture, postcard, or sticker. I plan to make a collage of all the places Zane travels in spirit with his family and friends.

In the grief community, honoring is essential to good mourning. It is the way we continue a relationship with our loved ones. It is how we pay respect to their life here on earth. It is how we remember. Sharing these celebratory acts with friends, asking them to be a part of how you honor your loved one, enables us all to feel linked together.

Birthdays are supposed to be personal.  We are celebrating a specific person on that day, thus finding ways to honor them that reflects their personality, their hobbies, or desires before they departed is an important way to commemorate them.

Birthdays are difficult, but every day is difficult, so I encourage you to take your loved one’s birthday as a day to smile through the tears and bring what they enjoyed in this life into your life. And to share it. Celebrate who they were, are, and will always be.