A Year in a Life

Y'all. Look what the 5th Avenue Theatre posted for my birthday!



I didn't even get out of bed this morning before I watched it. So fantastic. Bea Corley looks to be a brilliant Mary Lennox. Seattle friends, go see this NOW because it's your last chance!

Anyway. This isn't supposed to be a Secret Garden post. So the day I've been not-looking-foward-to for two years has arrived... I've reached the age that Chadwick got to but never got past.  On my 36th birthday, which was the last we would spend together, he and I talked about the weird feeling I had about arriving, healthy and whole and with every expectation of seeing 37, at the age at which my beloved uncle had died. And then it was less than a year before Chadwick was gone, too, despite his expectations (and indeed, eagerness--he was a bit of an odd one, my Chadwick) of seeing 40. I suppose you could say the death rate is still going strong at 100%.

Thanks, Google.

So I don't know how I feel about it today. My coworker whose office I share (even after three months, I still think of it as her office) also just not-celebrated a birthday, and we've talked a bit the the past week about neither of us really feeling the spirit of getting another year older. I feel, as I always do on this day, the weight of the legacy of sharing my birthday with a grandfather I can't remember (he would have been 85), the joy of a baby cousin who I don't see nearly often enough who now shares this birthday, too (I've lost track of how old she is), and a special kinship with a couple other beloved birthday buddies. (Okay, so one of them is Dulé Hill, who technically isn't "beloved" since he's a complete stranger I just admire when I see his work on TV, but the other one is a high school classmate who welcomed me back to Greenfield last summer with literal open arms and is beloved enough for both herself and a random celebrity, with some left over.)

That paragraph kind of got away from me a bit. I'm leaving it.

But there's an extra weight this year, that at some point in the next few months I'm likely going to cross what was Chadwick's finish line and have to keep going. He woke up in the arms of Jesus before he could get to the magical milestone he was so excited about, the one he was planning to greet like an old friend instead of as a drugery, the one he was already celebrating instead of dreading. And if God grants me another year on this planet to live and love and laugh and grow and be--the least I can do, the very least I can do is greet this year and the next great adventure with the same lightness in my heart.

Even if there are tears today. (There already are. It's ridiculous.) Even if I feel this hole in my heart so keenly as I face another day without him by my side. Even if the road looks long and dark and I'd rather just lay on the ground than carry on. He would not want me to waste a perfectly good year on angst--he'd want me to grab this life with both hands and stretch it in every way I can to make sure I didn't miss any of it. That is the legacy he's left with me. That is a thing that I can do.

Post title was not an intentional reference to "Seasons of Love," but since that works out so nicely, here you go. Maybe I'll make that my theme song for 39. That one or "No Day But Today," which also works well for birthdays. Here on in, I shoot without a script.