The Year of Grief Continues…

Since early January of this year, I’ve lost my grandma, my great-aunt (who I was close to), one of my aunts, a good friend I’ve known for 25 years, and my mom, all to completely unrelated causes. Mom died at the beginning of May and I’ve been taking her death extra hard because not only were we extremely close, I was her caregiver for the last few months of her life, which was all the time she was sick.

Now my dad is in the hospital and my birthday is tomorrow and my family keeps trying to encourage me to celebrate, which I know is what Mom would want, but the thought of celebrating anything right now makes me want to retreat into my little turtle shell and hide until next decade. I’ve never been a big birthday person, but she always was the one person who could get me to celebrate. “Your birthday is one of my favorite days because it brought me one of my favorite people.”