The sun woke up today, and I did too. Birds chirp outside the window to my left, while my old dog Jack sinks into the heated blanket at my feet. Even on the warmest days, he stares confused when I forget to switch the blanket to the hottest setting signaled by five orange lights.
Straight ahead, under a double window, and on top of a desk, sits my nine-year old granddaughter, Giovanna’s electric keyboard. She just performed in her first recital and is already talking about what dress she will wear to her next one.
On the raised shelf behind the keyboard, my three children joyfully embrace in happier time pictures.
Against sliding doors leading to a shallow closet, sits a port-a-crib my eleven-month-old Granddaughter, Ellie, doesn’t ever use. She would much rather be held, and I would much rather hold her. Very soon she will walk for the first time.
An hour ago, down the hall, in the kitchen, my husband poured his coffee into a travel mug, and left for work. Someday, maybe twenty years from now, he will stay home and drink his coffee, while he and I discuss the world and how when we were younger, it was better.
This whole past week, my sister, husband, and son have asked what I would be doing today. I said I didn’t know. How can a mother know what she will do the first time she has to do something. How does she know how she is going to feel? I simultaneously believe in things that I don’t believe in, like heaven. Heaven is one of those things.
To my right, next to my reclining chair sits a chest. On top of that chest sits a 9x13 picture of my twenty-eight-year-old son, Christopher. After my husband and his travel mug walked out the door, I lit two candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to the air. I placed the candles in front of my son’s picture and fixed the rosaries hanging from the frame. I straightened the birthday card his best friend, Dillon gave to him last year. Inside Dillon wrote, “Love you to death, kid. My brother, you already know what it is with us. Who’s car we takin!” The tattooed cutout doll Giovanna made of Christopher in grief group leans against the purple “OM” vase, he made me when he was in high school. Next, a picture of young me helping Osh Gosh blue overalled Christopher navigate the Little Tykes Motorcycle he received on his first birthday. Team baseballs litter the chest. On the corner closest to me, his tattered big book, (12 steps AA) sits like the family bible. In better times, he carried it everywhere. A few teaspoons of reserved ashes in a three-inch-tall white plastic container wait. His incinerated bones need just the right color glass to spiral through. The pendent needs just the right chain to sit close to this mother’s heart.
I sit in a comfortable reclining chair that I rarely recline. My fingers press keys on my lap. Later, today, after I take a walk, I will probably write again.
The sun woke up today, on what would have been my son’s twenty-ninth birthday. I would have made him lemon ricotta cookies, and I would have gone to Oregon Steaks in South Philly to have “Cheesesteaks for breakfast.” I would have prepared his favorite, Chicken Parmesan and sang happy birthday at the end of the day. I would have taken a video of him blowing out his candles on what would have been my son’s twenty-ninth birthday. I would have hugged him a million times. He gave the best hugs. I would have listened to him argue sports with his brother, tease his sister, adore his nieces, and talk finances with my husband.
I think later today, I will take a dustpan, spray cleaner and cloth to his grave and clean his stone like I used to clean his room.
I don’t know what else I will do. I don’t know how else I will feel. I don’t know. I never did this before.
I do know that my dog Jack sits on his warm blanket another day. My husband, quiet in his grief, works another day. My children will do what siblings do when one of them stops having a birthday. I don’t know what that is yet.
I do know that Christopher would have wanted me to do something fun. So, I will.
Maybe take a ride to Oregan Steaks in South Philly. Eat a cheesesteak while gazing at Citizens Bank Park where his beloved Phillies are having the best season ever.
He would have wanted me to smile. So, I will. He would have wanted me to not take life so seriously. I’ll try not to.
Maybe he might want me to know; he was with me when I lit the candles this morning, laughed at me when I sang to the air, will comfort my old dog Jack in his final hours, be there at his niece’s spring recital, and hold Ellie’s hands when she takes her first steps.
My son did not wake up today, but if he can hear me, I would want to tell him, what I always told him on his Birthday. “The day you were born, was one of the three happiest days of my life.” And now I would add, “Can’t wait until I get to hug you in Heaven.” Because I need to believe in heaven now.
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