A Birthday Letter

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Anxiety had been creeping up higher leading in to today; a level I had not experienced over several weeks now. I had tears yesterday for the first time in a while as I talked to one of our friends on how I was feeling about your birthday. I knew there were emotions percolating, but I could not really identify them.  

Experiencing milestones I call the "firsts" have been very hard. My birthday; first Thanksgiving and Christmas, as this time in the year was yours... you would vomit holiday season all over the house right after Halloween. And my birthday wish to you, since it was at the beginning of November, would be to wait at least until November 15th before we would transform the house to challenge the Macy's Holiday Parade. The firsts have a lot of energy in them, whether they were specific days or walking by that ice cream place for the first time - the one we had taken Kaia to because you had promised a pizza and ice cream night to her – an act had taken all of the energy you could muster, and it was the last night we had gone out. But you loved every moment of it, and so did I. The firsts are hard. And today started off that way.    

My mind was running all over the place this week and especially this morning, trying to catch up to the emotions as they changed many directions. It was not about the fear of celebrating your birthday, but not being able to do it with you. Birthdays are about celebrating the birth and life, and the hard part is having to shift my mind for it to mean something else. I already celebrate you every day.  

I went to bed last night laying down what of you that remains with me, and our wedding rings next to me hoping to feel your energy - yes these are strange behaviors that one does. I wanted to desperately see you in my dreams, but I think what I really wanted was to experience something new that would remain as a new birthday memory with you. Unfortunately, I did not see you, or perhaps I don't remember. I woke up with a lot of sadness because of this. 

I thought a run this morning would give me some space to organize my thoughts a bit as it always does. I felt blank in a sense that I had a hard time with focus. But coming home and starting to write is allowing me to think through what your birthday means, but more so about the person you are and what you mean to me. I've been thinking about us and our relationship a lot lately. Particularly because I have so much time in this shelter-in situation, which the witty commentary coming from you about all of this would’ve been amazing to hear. I’ve been exploring a lot about myself; my relationship with you and love, losing you, and who am I after all of this. I had been stuck in this mental state of identifying as “Brynn’s Husband,” given how public we had been in our writings – the honesty about our struggles, fears, hopes and desires as a married couple dealing with adversity. Then came the label of being a widower. It’s a hard label to rationalize and accept, because in my mind it only happened to other people. It was not in my reality until it became real. I am very certain this is not what you wanted me to experience. But what do you want for me? I know this is selfish of me for asking it on your birthday. But you need to understand today is becoming another moment of reckoning with myself that you are not here, and that my relationship with you must change. What I want more than anything is to hear your voice, your laugh, your advice as you masterfully looked inward about life and happiness. That desire of wanting to experience you is burning more so today given the nature of focus. Therefore, it’s hard to celebrate something that is not there: your birthday that I would want to celebrate with you.  

My god did I love you. I loved before you, but why was our love different? What was it about losing you that drove me to new bottoms I had never experienced before? I realize I fell off a height I had never stood at as well, hitting that water at such speeds that knocked me out and left me with a motionless body, sinking further and further to those new depths. So, I ask you again: what was about our love? It wasn’t perfect love, if there is such thing. Sometime our stubbornness got the best of us. We also did exercised selfish behaviors from time to time, as I do with this letter. And often, our uncontrollable anger made us do ridiculous and regrettable things. We came with a lot of emotions into this relationship, and they can be wonderful and self-destructive depending on how well we were able to bring some self-awareness while experiencing them.    

I had been angry with you for leaving me. You had promised that you wouldn’t abandon me, and part of my anger is towards that broken promise that has brought back an elevated fear of it. I think your birthday is bringing back some acute emotions and fears I had experienced in the early days. There is a profoundness I am having thinking about you, about today, and the feelings of losing you that a special day like this is serving as a reminder. But I want to tell you that my anger is subsiding as time passes. I also want to apologize to you, because I shouldn’t have leaned on you for something that was not caused by you or for you to fix. What I should’ve done was focus on my relationship with abandonment, while I had the safety of your love, protection and the security you gave me. The thing you taught me was that relationship was not about completing the other person, but more so standing next to them, unwavering, while they worked on the long, arduous process of growth and being a human. It was about providing the safety and soft landing as we inevitably tripped along the way. You taught me how to be a supportive partner, by how you supported me. That was the beauty of it all: The unrelenting and unconditional love that made me want to be a better person for you, our relationship, but also for myself in the end. There is a poetic injustice with all of this. The injustice that I had to lose you to bring attention back to some of these things about myself that I had used you and your love to avoid.      

So, where do I go from here, Brynn? Do I fear love again, because of the devastation I felt losing you?  Do I reintroduce the fear of abandonment into my emotional arsenal that I used many times before you and sometimes on you? Do I rebuild the wall that you helped me bring down, but more so I loved having it down? I just can’t do that. I don’t want to swim in the shallow end with no fear of drowning. I lost you and the love we had. And it hurts more than I can ever convey in words. But I don’t want to lose my relationship with the depths of love that you helped me discover. There was a deep beauty in the love and adoration I felt looking at you in the more challenging times of our lives together. The love that was honest, perfect and imperfect. And the love that made going through life with its ups and down not just ok, but amazing!  You were the architect of that part of me and what is left behind. But I am the builder that must continue building. And perhaps that is the answer to my question to you of what do you want for me? To simply keep on building.  

As I think about your birthday again, you’re doing what you always do. Helping me see new things or things that I get to see differently. You help me change my narrative, which eventually changes where I go from here. You draw out a creative side of me that you had discovered and pushed me to exercise. I looked at a blank piece of paper when I came back from my run this morning, and I just wanted to simply write: Happy birthday, my love. I am so glad you were born!  

Today I am not celebrating your birth or your life. I am not remembering you because I am not forgetting. I am celebrating you. Your everything.

-Troy