Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. It was the first one since her passing, and you know… I thought I could ignore it. Having not lived nearby for the bulk of my adult life, it wasn’t really a huge event between us. There were cards exchanged, phone calls, a sporadic gift or two (because I am, hands down, the world’s worst gifter). But we had no rhythm of tradition that have been broken with her absence, no obvious hole that hovered over the day, achingly unfilled.
Instead, there was simply this: the day that could have been, versus the day that was.
We’ve lived on the farm—a handful of miles from her— for three of her birthdays. The first two found her here, at my kitchen table. I made whatever dinner she was in the mood for. Nothing fancy, nothing that was too much trouble, none of the exotic dishes she leaned to in her younger days—because her tastes had become so much less adventurous as she got older. Of course, each year, I baked her a cake. My mom was known as a splendid cook, but it was her cakes that were sublime. Her glass, domed cake plate always held some treasure, from as far as I could remember. I believe the first birthday cake I made for her was German chocolate because goodness, that woman loved a rich German chocolate cake more than anyone else I’ve ever met. The second year, when she turned 66, I recreated her signature Hawaiian Wedding Cake from a recipe I found online as a surprise; she said it wasn’t quite right, but was made nearly perfect by the fact that she was surrounded by her grandkids as she blew out her candles.
Last year, there was nothing. She didn’t even answer the phone the two times I tried to call. There was a reason for that, I know now. My mother was declining rapidly, suffering from a disease she refused to admit to even her beloved sister, her closest confidant. She was physically, mentally, and emotionally compromised beyond what any of us understood.
There was no dinner. No cake. Not even a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” sung over the phone by the little people she called, “my babies.”
And this year, she’s gone.
There was no birthday dinner yesterday. No cake. And there never will be again. There were no eager shouts of, “Oma’s here!” No helping her navigate the walk to the door, or easing her back into the passenger set of her sister’s car for the ride home. The birthday that could have been has been replaced with the feeling of sadness over the wasted years and grief for the chasm that sat between us for nearly my entire life.
I had decided a few weeks ago to “forget” her birthday, thinking that not acknowledging it would somehow make it a non-event in my mind and heart. I was wrong, of course. The body knows how to mourn even when we refuse to give the beast breath, and the spirit? It writhes in pain even when we aren’t poking the bruise of our hurt. I walked through my morning with “it’s Mom’s birthday” just behind my lips, even though I found that I couldn’t say it out loud. Despite the fact that I was knee-deep in tutoring my CC class, my head was aching with it. Eventually, I posted a few photos that have struck me as moments where my mother’s joy was most complete to Facebook as a way of venting some of the emotional steam building up in my chest.
In the end, the day ended without drama or much beyond a dull thud of loss in my heart. I think I’m getting to the point where I am able to focus more on the good of our relationship than the bad. Maybe. I don’t know, really. There’s no playbook here to follow. All I know is that the day hurt, but it was bearable. It was so busy that I fell into bed last night realizing that I hadn’t had a moment, really, to just sit and be still. I told myself I would commemorate the occasion today in the way most like Mom— by making a cake. I dug through her recipe box and found two I remembered: the first a fairly basic chocolate cake with a cream cheese frosting, and the second a colorful, over-the-top confection with pineapple and coconut and sour cream and pecans.
If you knew my mom at all, you know which one I picked to remember her on her birthday without even being told.
The fancier one, of course. The one that drew attention, garnered oohs and ahhhs, and was an ample demonstration of what an absolute creative genius she was in the kitchen.
She would definitely approve.