Operation Safe Harbour — Black Friday
[transcript]
Black Friday was thankfully pretty much a non-event, as in, it was my birthday and I intentionally failed to remind people this year. It was particularly hard to celebrate, just like everyone else’s — having plans, or lack thereof, during a pandemic. But trying to celebrate without one of your loved ones who made your birthday special to begin with makes it even more difficult.
Does it even get easier as time progresses, one might ask? Many people this year have faced or will face their first birthday, just as they managed their first holiday meal this past month. I know, for me, I absolutely dreaded my first birthday without my husband two years ago. I missed him so much to the point where I just wanted to swear off birthdays for the rest of my life. So, the jury is still out on that one.
When I was first dating my boyfriend, who became later my husband, he knew I was not keen on celebrating it. So, for my sweet sixteenth, when I had opened my high school locker that morning, there was a bouquet of flowers, a Garfield plush doll and a birthday card, containing a letter on why birthdays were occasions to celebrate and why mine was important to him. At the end of the last period, he had invited my friends and bought an ice cream cake so he could hold a surprise birthday party in the Science Wing. As you can tell, it definitely made an indelible impression if I can remember it so well after all these years.
Since then, every year, whether we were together or not, I would either receive a call, a card and / or a gift. After we moved in together, and had gotten married later, he still wanted to do something together on my birthday, even if it was just brainstorming on a creative idea, like the year we sat down at his computer after the City of Villains MMORPG was released to develop the concept of Bombshell Blonde, aka Jule Johnson.
The mandatory birthday tradition he insisted on every single year while we were living together was to be the first one to wish me happy birthday just after midnight on the 27th and then be the very last one to wish me happy birthday again, always with a kiss. No matter what I was doing at that moment, if I were awake, he would pull me aside and I happily complied.
So, two years ago on the 26th, I had gotten the news from my parents after attending the Tree of Life Ceremony the day before, another emotional hard-hitting event during my annual trip #RoundingCapeHorn by the way, that my grandmother was being admitted into palliative care while having a pre-birthday lunch. By the time, the hours counted down, I was not only an emotional mess but a physical one as I was horribly sick to my stomach. Whether it was a norovirus or food poisoning, it didn’t matter. It was a blessing in disguise. As the clock struck midnight, I was hunched over the toilet vomiting my guts out and when I’m that sick, I want no one around me. If my husband were alive at that moment, he would even not have been allowed near me, let alone kiss me.
I was unconscious pretty much throughout the day, recovering from my illness. I had no energy whatsoever. However, something magical happened on that day. My elderly grandmother who had advanced dementia had probably one of her last touchstone days of lucidity and normalcy. She had her hair done; went for lunch with my father; played cribbage with some other seniors; and held her own in conversations. I feel that in some way I was giving her a gift of my health, after all the many years she had called me on my birthday to wish me well. She passed away less than a month later.
Now, I do not recommend getting sick to avoid holidays. I’ve missed quite a few since I was diagnosed with my disability. It is just that there is going to be some traditions that if you feel will be difficult like the one I described, it is okay to skip it and distract yourself with something else. That is what I ended up doing this year.
Ian Henderson, a grief educator located here in Ottawa, has mentioned during his talks that he has so graciously held during this time of year, that holiday traditions during times of grief if painful or uncomfortable, do not have to be observed. He mentioned that a planned activity can easily become a tradition if it happened to have been repeated successfully twice and then gets labelled as something that has to be done. He suggests, perhaps to create a new tradition instead in honoring your lost loved one. Nothing is written in stone after all.
All I can say is that after Friday, I started feeling better because even though I wanted no one to wish me a happy birthday, my friends wouldn’t let me let it go unnoticed. It may have been Thanksgiving in the States last month but to have my birthday around the same time seems to have the same effect: my tears of grief were transformed into tears of gratitude for every person who sent me a tweet, a text, a card, or a direct message. Who needs ice cream cake when you have friends like that?
My path #RoundingCapeHorn continues in the South Atlantic as I think we’re approaching the “Roaring Forties”, strong westerly gale-force winds that wreathe the globe between the 40th and 50th southern latitudes below the Tropic of Capricorn. They are the result of the combination “of air being displaced from the Equator towards the South Pole, the Earth’s rotation, and the scarcity of landmasses to serve as windbreaks” (Source: Wikipedia). I visualize the trip from leaving Argentina, heading south, and following the Global Challenge race where ships travel from west to east, against the prevailing winds, to circle around the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, and then continue northward once more towards the South Pacific. My husband always said that I do things the hard way.
I wish I could say that the metaphorical nautical forecast would be pretty smooth sailing until the next period of “events”. Unfortunately, we’ve hit another storm and I’ll talk about that in my next blog post. Thank you for listening.
