Birthdays and Mother ~ a Symbiotic Relationship

I grew up in a household where great emphasis was put on birthdays. As it happened, the year was nicely punctuated with the five birthdays ~ January, March, June, October and December.  Mine is the October one and falls tomorrow.

I really only fully realised the extent to which birthdays and Mother were totally intertwined when I faced into my first birthday without her three years ago.  In the literature associated with losing elderly parents, there is relatively little emphasis put on the emotional upheaval that can be associated with birthdays without mothers. This is in stark contrast to references about anniversaries of death or major festivals, like Christmas.

I think it would have helped me enormously if someone had taken me aside before that first birthday without Mother and said: ‘Hey, I think you should be warned that birthdays are never, ever the same after your mother has died because the birthday has huge meaning and significance for the mother as well as the child ~ whatever age the child is ~ and now there’s only one of you left to celebrate.’ 

Three years on, I’m much better equipped to deal with my birthday without Mother because I’ve come to  know that the days around October 18 will bring back so many memories of birthdays that we shared.  Tonight, it suddenly came back to me how Mother always made a walnut coffee cake for my birthday. I was back sitting on the tall stool in the kitchen  watching her ice the cake and handing me the spoon to lick.

It’s never big things that come back to me ~ just the warmth of her smile and the sheer pleasure of remembering birthday moments we shared ~ like the time when I was seven or eight and we waited together on Main Street, Castleblayney for the bus to arrive from Dundalk bearing a pink padded dressing-gown that she had bought me for my birthday present.

Tomorrow, whatever the weather, my thoughts will be with Mother as I plant snowdrop bulbs that will bloom without fail on her birthday on January 29th.