Sadness in the Seattle sun | Reflections

Today was another glorious day in Seattle. For the last few days it has felt like spring has hit us early and everyone is enjoying the sunny weather; if you know Seattle, you know that we lap it up…suddenly you see people in sunglasses and shorts, yet it’s still technically winter. We tend to associate the sun with happiness and that feeling of warmth both inside and out, with vacations and summer, with family get-togethers and BBQs, with light and life. But sad and tragic things happen every single day, no matter the weather; life doesn’t stop because it hits a whopping 60 degrees Fahrenheit in February.

Today is…was, the birthday of someone I loved very much, and he would have been the same age today that I was the year he died, almost 7 years ago. The day he died was a sunny day too. Birthdays are when we celebrate a person’s life, yet when someone dies, birthdays, anniversaries and just about every holiday season, it is hard not to think of the person that is now gone. Now that I’m a parent, I can’t help imagining how a (his) mother feels on the birthday of a child you have lost. I do know the grief I have felt and feel at the loss of a partner… And that grief was unbearable, and I felt as though I went to hell and back after he died.

I felt the need to visit a cemetery today; there is no grave site for me to visit and I have always sat with my thoughts and feelings alone, but a place of rest and peace was where I wanted to be. We went to Lake View Cemetery, up by Volunteer Park; Roman and I wandered through the tombstones and grave sites of all these people we didn’t know but who other people have lost and loved. There I was telling my 4-year-old boy to not jump on the graves, to walk around them, to help me look for Bruce Lee’s grave (as if he knew where it was…), and I tried to explain in preschooler terms, what all those grave stones represent.

There’s a lot of sadness in my heart when I think of who I have lost, yet a lot happens in 7 years. Whole lifetimes happen and happiness can be rediscovered. I didn’t see just see just a cemetery today, I saw my little boy and his whole life ahead of him, one that shouldn’t end before mine. I never want to know that loss. And I no longer hold the belief that we ‘should live each day as if it were our last’ but that we should appreciate all we have now while we still have it. Life as we know it can change in an instant.