Birthday Cakes & Anniversaries

One November, several years ago, I had the worst week of my life. So far in my life anyway. Although, it’s been 14 years and nothing else has ever been close in comparison. I would guess (and hope) that it will remain the worst week of my life for as long as I live.

That means every November has one week worth of anniversaries of the days that made up that horrible week. It isn’t like things quickly got better in the weeks that followed either. It’s just that after that week, most days blurred together for a really long time. It took a few years worth of blurry days for me to know that I would survive.

I did survive. After a while, I even started living again. But there is one week every November, this week every November, that living, surviving, and time, still feel as impossible as they did all those years ago. No matter how many years have passed, the heartache of this week has never lessened.

During the worst week of my life, thoughts of surviving never once popped into my head. For those few days the future didn’t exist at all. There was only minutes, lived through one breath at time. Life after was incomprehensible.

But time kept moving, even though I was too numb and broken to notice at first. After a while there were a few good things in life again. And eventually I was able to let myself enjoy those things without feeling immediately crushed by guilt. Guilt that I was still able to smile every once in a while when my sister never would again.

I still feel that guilt sometimes. Guilt that the world isn’t fair and I get to keep breathing while my sister doesn’t. For a moment that thought knocks the wind out of me, taking my breath away. And for just a moment, I stay like that. Lungs empty, heart still. Then I take a deep breath. As I inhale, I focus on what it feels like to be alive. And I remember that all those years ago, I made a promise to live for both of us.

In the middle of the week of anniversaries of the darkest days in my life, there is a one day reprieve. It wasn’t always that way. For the first couple years, it might have been the day of that week that hurt the worst of all. But, in the middle of all the other anniversaries is my sister’s birthday. And it’s always felt bittersweet (but right) to celebrate her as best as possible.

Even during that week, only a few days after she was gone, we still did our best to celebrate. It wasn’t the small party she had been talking about for months, but it was still at least a little bit of a party. Even though feeling like celebrating anything was the last thing our hearts felt like doing. But even in the darkness, her light shined bright enough to keep the party going. 

So every November, a bittersweet birthday celebration is the brightest day during the darkest week of my year. For one day during that week, I smile more than I cry.

One year my vegan-long-before-it-was-cool sister told me that for her birthday the only thing she wanted was for me to be a vegetarian. It was shortly after her birthday wish that I found out I was severely anemic. Because of the circumstances, vegetarianism wasn’t something I was even able to consider again while my sister was alive. So every year, in honor of her request and how she lived, I spend her birthday vegan.

I spend the day doing the things I know she enjoyed when was alive, and the things I imagine she’d like today. Most years I drink a kombucha and I order a dirty chai with non-dairy milk from a local coffee shop. I used to choke them down with soy milk, but I think she would have moved on to tastier alternatives like oat milk now too. And I spend the whole day focused on celebrating my really cool big sister.

There is always Thai food eaten from takeout containers, PBR drank from bottles, and vegan birthday cake. Some years I’ve bought her cake, but these days I prefer to bake her one from scratch. I spend weeks ahead of her birthday selecting which kind of cake she’d want. This year I made her a vegan hummingbird cake, preparing all the elements from a combination of two different recipes. It was something I would have loved to make for her when she was alive.

My sister has never eaten even a single bite of one of the birthday cakes I’ve baked for her. Nor will she ever have the chance to try any of the future cakes I plan on baking for every one of her future birthday celebrations. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop baking her cakes or celebrating her birthday. The world, my world especially, is brighter because of her life. And that means it will always be worth celebrating.