It’s my birthday! 🎉

Over the weekend I remembered one of the many reasons why I keep ignoring my birthday. Yes, besides getting older, which is something that women are allegedly against. I am happy and feel extremely blessed that I have taken another trip around the moon or is it sun? (I could never figure that out)With Covid and everything being alive is not such a sure thing anymore. Nothing makes you more in touch with the fragility of humankind than when someone your age “shuffles off this mortal coil” But! I am starting a new year in my life, happy birthday to me! SO back to the matter at hand. My dad passed away 6 days before my ninth birthday. And I will say, it’s not like my family was big on birthdays but as a kid, you are kind of big on your birthday. (insert appropriate emoji) 🤷I remember every detail of the night he passed despite it being 20 odd years later, vividly or maybe my memory has recreated some things. But anyway, fast forward to 6 days later, everything is different and yet things still are the same. You are still waking up in the same house, going through the same motions and yet there is still this grey blanket that is heavy and reeks of sadness enshrouding everyone and everything. Death still lingers, I would say the smell of death but no, the tentacles of death are still gripped around you. And to top it off all the mourners have left so the gaping hole is now really reality, I shrugged it off during the funeral but afterwards, there is nothing to hide behind. Not forgetting everyone pitying you, “Oh you poor child.” Mai Tafadzwa, our generation’s family matriarch gave me a card on the day, I remember it, I loved it but still had mixed feelings about the day. You don’t know how to feel really, should I be happy because I am a year older but why when my dad has passed on and you keep thinking now that he is gone what does that mean for us. Are we getting into some Neria type of story or what?I know that seems extra for a nine year old but I have always been an overthinker ,an unnecessary burden for sure. Like I understood death, but I never really understood what it would mean for my family. All I can say is that shit sucks, for days, for years, for decades. It still hurts and it is even worse now than it was when I was younger, and I do not understand why that is. There is always a tinge of sadness linked to my birthday and I can’t shake it off and I get angry at myself when I forget the day he died. It’s even worse now that I have to look at his pictures to remember what he looked like. That is sad. I kept a diary entry he made the day I was born, a tiny scrap of paper that has so much significance despite its insignificance. As I become a year older, I have chosen to find solace in my favourite place; amongst words. I normally prefer words that are not mine but well, mine will do for now. Will I ever shake off the hang up I associate with my birthday? Maybe. But there are other factors involved AND we do not want to get into that today…So eat cake on my behalf today and toast to many more years. If you did not understand this post, its okay. I do not understand half the things my mind churns out too!