No longer a Birthday

If Vivian were still here today, March 10, 2008, she would be 54. She is in a place where time has no significance, and a good guess would be that birthdays do not matter there at all, since eternal life is exactly that. This day truly is the last day of my "firsts". March 6th 2007 was the day she was buried. The 3rd was her Atlanta funeral. The 28th she gracefully and quietly went into another world that we cannot begin, in the least amount, to conceive of its peacefulness, warmth, love, and all of the superlatives that we name as good things in this life, and much more. For me, the time since Thanksgiving 2007 has been about emotional survival. It seems now it is many tiny things that say she is truly gone and that it is ok for me to move on. Each of those tiny things hurt because it reinforces she is gone, and that hurt is healthy to experience and go on. All the major milestones of the first year are done. Good friends that know say the second year begins to get better and this is so important to me because Vivian told me to "go on and have a good life, including having another woman in my life if that happens.." I intend to honor that advice for not only her, but my family and myself.