January 17th. You would have been thirty-five today.
I woke up knowing. My body remembered before my mind caught up. There’s a weight to this day that’s different from all the others. Not heavier, exactly. Just different. Like the air itself knows what today means.
I’ve been thinking about what birthdays mean when someone is gone. Is it still your day if you’re not here to celebrate it? The calendar says yes. My heart says yes. But the world moves on, oblivious, and that feels wrong somehow. Like the universe should pause, just for a moment, to acknowledge that you existed. That you were born. That you mattered.
Thirty-five years since you came into this world. Almost five years since you left it. The math feels obscene. You should have had decades more. Should have turned forty, fifty, old and gray and still beautiful. Should have blown out so many more candles, made so many more wishes.
What do you wish for someone who can’t receive wishes anymore?
I wish you could have stayed longer. Seen more sunrises. Laughed more. Loved more. I wish time hadn’t been so cruel, so finite, so absolutely final.
But also—I’m grateful. For the thirty years and almost five months we got. For every birthday I got to celebrate with you. For the way you’d pretend not to care about birthdays but your eyes would light up anyway. For the terrible “cake”—it wasn’t even a cake!—I bought you that one year that we ate anyway, laughing until we cried.
I went to your favorite place today. Sat there for a while, remembering. A stranger walked by and smiled, probably thought I was just someone enjoying the view. They didn’t know I was sitting with you. Having a birthday picnic with someone who exists now only in memory and in the permanent ache in my chest.
I sang “Happy Birthday” quietly, feeling foolish and not caring. My voice cracked on your name. It always does now.
People asked if I was okay today. I said yes, because how do you explain? How do you tell them that you’re celebrating and mourning simultaneously? That birthdays now are beautiful and terrible in equal measure? That I’m happy you were born and devastated by how the story ended?
The boys asked about you this morning. They wanted to know what cake you liked. What presents you would have wanted. Our oldest, seven now, remembers you more clearly. He talks about you with this mixture of certainty and question marks—he knows you, but he’s also forgetting, and that kills me. Our youngest, who just turned five, knows you mostly through stories. Through photographs. Through the way I still talk to you like you’re listening.
I told them about how we met. How you looked that day. How we promised forever and meant it, even though forever turned out to be so much shorter than we planned. Four years of marriage. Four years of building a life, a home, a family. It should have been twenty, thirty, fifty years. But I’m grateful for the four we got.
They wanted to make you a card. Drew pictures of you with them, doing things they wish they could do. Playing. Laughing. Being here. Their love for you, for someone who’s becoming more memory than mother to them—it’s almost too much to bear.
You’d be so proud of them. They’re so much like you. Our oldest has your laugh, your way of finding joy in small things. Our youngest has your stubbornness (in a good way, of course), your sense of justice. They carry pieces of you forward in ways they don’t even understand yet.
You’d be so different now, I think. Thirty-five. Probably laughing at me for being sentimental. Probably rolling your eyes at this whole thing. But you’d be touched too. I know you would. You always acted tough but you felt everything so deeply. That’s one of the things I loved most about you.
I wonder what you’d be doing if you were here. What plans you’d have made. What cake you’d have chosen. What wishes you’d have made before blowing out the candles. I’ll never know. That’s the thing about loss—it steals not just the person but all the future moments that should have been.
But today, I’m choosing to focus on what was. On the fact that you were born. That for thirty years and 140 days, you lived. You laughed. You loved. You changed lives, including mine. You left marks on this world that won’t fade.
Happy birthday, my love. Thank you for being born. Thank you for every single day we got. Thank you for becoming the kind of love that doesn’t end when the person does.
I’m lighting a candle for you tonight. Making a wish on your behalf. And tomorrow, I’ll wake up and keep living, keep carrying you forward, keep making sure that your birthday—that you—are never forgotten.
Thirty-five looks good on you. Even from here. Even now. Always.
P.S. I still love you so much. You fulfilled your promise—to love and accompany me until the end of your time. Now it’s my turn to return the favor. And yeah, as you might see from above, there are tears flowing as I write another one of these. But there’s no other way.