How do we mark Michael's birthday...??

I got an email from Amazon telling me that Michael Matheny would be have a birthday in a week, on March the 2nd, and that I might be thinking about buying a book for him. I didn't need their commercial message to remind me, since it has been looming large in my mind for months.

It is all hard, this living without him, but somehow this has been very hard. How do I/we acknowledge this day? His wonderful warm presence is gone from our lives, but I have marked this day every year for 45 years and can't stop the practice even if I wished to do so. Which I don't. But I worried about what seemed the right way to do it?

I decided that my first requirement for the day was to spend it with Kevin and this I will do. We will be together with family and close friends. I think that surviving it, more or less intact, was the second requirement. I am hopeful about this happening also. The third was to give and get hugs from Jen and Ray and Matt and that I will do also, not on the birthday itself, but close enough.

I was aware that Michael liked to celebrate his birthday by having a big dinner party with lots of friends, at his favorite restaurant of the moment. I went to these parties and got to know his friends.

He enjoyed them a lot, both the parties and his friends. And I did too.

And that is part of what made this birthday hard for me. There are many friends who mourn him and want to remember him on this day. I wanted to have a Michael dinner party so I could see and hug them all for the therapy that this would provide.

I have not in fact felt up to organizing such an event, but if there are many who would want this moment to happen, please email me and we will make it happen.

Photos are from his party at the French Meadow, in March 2010, where I met Jen, wonderful Jen, for the first time. She was such a bright spot in his life that seeing her always makes me cry, with joy, I think.

Let me know how you will mark this day.

Mom