I've always loved my birthday. I've never been someone who dreaded getting older. Maybe because I'm honest to goodness happy with where I am in life. Maybe because I still naively believe I could do anything if I really wanted to. But I don't really love my birthday since Jesse died.
I could always count on a phone call from my brother on my birthday. We'd usually talk a few other times throughout the year, but I really looked forward to our birthdays and know we'd chat and catch up for a good hour or so. I miss that phone call so much. How can you talk to someone for only a few hours year, but then miss few hours a year so much once they're gone? It doesn't seem like that big of a loss. But I feel it so heavily every year on my birthday.
And then again on your birthday.
But my birthday hurts worse for some reason. I think part is knowing I'm 34 now. An age you'll never know. Every year as I grow older, it's a reminder that you didn't get to. As we grew up, everything I went through, you were following just 2 years behind. Now you're gone. And it hurts so much some days.
I saw a butterfly today, land almost right on my windshield. I had a brief passing thought that you were coming to say hi. And then I had an angry thought because I hate that we all have left of you are signs we look for desperately as we hang on to every little thing as some kind of hope that you're still here.
