Birthday grief

 A few weeks ago, Ned celebrated his 17th birthday. Whilst we all sat in the garden chatting as Dad lit the BBQ, it dawned on me that being all together as a five without Mum no longer felt like we were rehearsing for real life; it actually felt like it. Squabbling for space on our garden bench (the only piece of outside furniture that isn’t completely broken) and reaching across each other for the olives and crisps reminded me of all the times we had done the same when Mum was alive. Instead of beer, we would have been pouring glass after glass of 7up or coke (a normally forbidden drink), but the setting and celebratory feel would be the same. 

Mum fostered within us the ‘birthday bug’, something which caught hold in the week leading up to the big day. In fact, a fast approaching birthday was so powerful it even afforded benefits in the days preceding it.  ‘It’s my birthday in a few days’ was a refrain used frequently to relinquish us from cleaning up after dinner or taking the dogs on a walk. We brandished it like a get out of jail free card, secure in the knowledge that the others would reluctantly accept its legitimacy, knowing when their birthday came around this free pass would be theirs.

Mum’s daily reminders to not go snooping in her bedroom for presents coupled with the fizzy anticipation of having a whole day where we got to decide on everything left us weak at the knees. A whole day of our siblings being nice to us, where we didn’t have to do any chores and got delicious food and presents. It was like a real-life dream.

My 19th birthday

The night before, Mum would carefully arrange our presents and cards in a washing basket, tie a balloon to it and leave it outside our bedroom door (a hazard we had to remember to avoid if stumbling to the loo in the morning). Upon waking up with the glorious realisation that the rarest event of the year had arrived, we would charge into Mum and Dads room lugging our present basket with us. As we bounded into their bed, with our siblings trailing behind us belting out happy birthday, Mum and Dad would sit up dazed and sleepy eyed, sneakily checking we hadn’t broken the not-before-7am-rule. Once the birthday boy (or me) settled in the warm spot right between them (the best place on the bed), Dad would go downstairs to prepare the ‘breakfast tray’; an assortment of fruit and innocent smoothie (with some marmite toast and tea for Mum). While we feasted on our treats, present opening would begin with Mum carefully watching and noting down every gift we received and its sender (for the dreaded thank you letter writing activity later in the week).

After the final present had been opened, we would leave Mum and Dads room littered with wrapping paper and bring our new toys downstairs to the kitchen to play with while we ate our birthday cereal (the sugariest one we had been allowed to buy). This was also the point at which Mum would have to console a jealous younger sibling who, after being carried along with the excitement of the morning, suddenly realised how much they wanted the Lego castle and light-sabre their lucky brother had received. Perhaps if we were being generous, we might let them play with us over breakfast. But until then, they remained spectator to our birthday luck, feeding our hugely inflated birthday ego and making us like our presents even more. 

The day went by in this buzz of contagious excitement. Mum loved birthdays, so we all loved birthdays.

* 

Ned’s 14th birthday was his first birthday without Mum.  Tom was on his gap year travelling around India so it was just me, Dad and Will at home to try and foster some of the birthday bug in him. Dad and I knew the drill well, and our plan was to make the day as exciting as possible to try and offset some of the sadness that might creep in. Maybe if we spoilt him and filled the day with surprises, we could make it a little less obvious that Mum wasn’t here to celebrate with us…

NeDS 14TH BIRTHDAY

I put myself on grief patrol, and my supplies were preparation and presents. I didn’t mind spending hours in the normally overwhelming and brightly lit Sports Direct seeking out every present on Ned’s list. I was more than happy to patiently queue between towering shelves of trainers and baseball hats, growing increasingly flustered by the loud music and fluorescent signs. Never before had I wrapped presents with such gusto (and so neatly as well!). I was going to make sure the washing basket was piled high, and even more I was using ‘Frozen’ wrapping paper to make the day even more light-hearted and fun. A birthday without Mum? No biggie.

Except, despite our attempts to follow the same traditions as normal, it just felt like we were putting on a show with an ill-rehearsed ensemble. It didn’t have that electric birthday feel that filled the days when Mum was alive. Of course, as you get older birthdays lose a bit of their shine and the sibling jealousy of new toys had ended long ago, but this birthday just felt a bit off. It didn’t feel like it counted because Mum wasn’t there with us. In fact, it felt like we were celebrating a pretend birthday on a randomly picked day of the year. Rather than manifest as sadness, grief was masquerading as an uncomfortable weight in my chest. I was unsettled. I was uneasy. But I was definitely not ‘grieving’. 

a BIRTHDAY WALK (i’ve gone from tallest to shortest)

This reluctance to properly acknowledge that I might be grieving came from this distorted idea that grief was the enemy. It was a battle of good versus bad and I would win by trampling on it and resisting it with all my might. How dare it try and underscore Ned’s birthday with sadness. How unfair to not only lose mum but to have to be completely sad about it too. Rather than sit with this foreign feeling, I was going to use my powers of rationalisation and state-of-the-art coping skills to battle it away. I wasn’t even going to call it by its name.  

Grief at this point symbolised pieces of a puzzle that put together represented a life without Mum. But I wasn’t ready to accept this yet. Rather than distinguishing the different sad feelings that swelled within me, I saw grief as one uncomfortable and messy mass of emotion. My job was to carefully smother it with a thin layer of happiness (like you would cover a messy structure with tarpaulin); something which gave me a temporary sense of being ok but didn’t quite get rid of the weight of discomfort. If any sad feeling did peek through, it was so hard to distinguish from all the other emotions lumped together, that I could create my own narrative to understand it.  I could attribute it to tiredness or to that uneasy feeling of waiting for a reply to a text from someone I quite liked. Rather than see it as grief-shaped sadness, I could let myself think it was about something else that I could fix. I kept the indistinct shapes beneath my emotional tarpaulin (if there is such a thing), as indistinct as I could.

birthday breakfast now happens at the kitchen table (before a game of monopoly deal) you can still spot the birthday cereal…

BIRThDAY bbq (the piles in the back are my attempts at some lockdown gardening)

I have found that in the three years since Mum died, I haven’t got rid of this mass of emotion, I have just got better at recognising its contours. Sadness feels less like an enemy and more like another part of myself that I just hadn’t really known very well before. Time hasn’t ‘healed’ the wound, it’s just given me more of an opportunity to understand who (and how) I am when I am sad. I know that sometimes grief manifests as a momentary low. Sometimes it’s a refreshing cry. Sometimes it’s an all-consuming feeling that drains me and tangles up every other emotion (this is one of the worst forms). Other times it’s a dull ache, that I can prod at like a sore tooth. This is by no means a completed task, and I will be forever learning about these different manifestations of sadness. However, untangling the threads of each emotion makes them more predictable and familiar. It gives me a sense of control and makes the feelings less terrifyingly unknown. 

Whilst there are multiple reasons why a birthday three years after Mum died is easier to celebrate (the shock of her death is less, for example), making space for my sadder emotions means I am not on constant alert for grief to appear unannounced. I’m not ‘battle ready’ all the time – an exhausting state to be in. On Ned’s 17th birthday while we all talked over each other and squabbled about the music, I felt present and engaged in a way I hadn’t three years ago. I wasn’t afraid of grief infiltrating on the day because actually, if it did, I knew what to expect.

p.s it’s my birthday next Friday