Gary Lerude

March 10, 2021

Another Birthday, One Day It Will Be Otherwise

Tuesday, March 9

After so many years, birthdays are routine annual events, just another day in the 365 days that fill the calendar. To write that exposes one of the paradoxes of living: life is normal, even boring, until it isn't. Only then we remember the miracle of each breath, each blade of grass, the sun that gives us daylight and warmth.

Jack Law posted this to my Facebook page today:

"Isn't it nice to be having birthdays! The alternative is so final I am happy to continue with the birthdays."

A colleague and friend from my TI days is receiving hospice care, dying of brain cancer, a cancer he's fought for some two decades. Through surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo, he's maintained his humor and optimism. I've never heard him complain, despite the inexorable shadow that has chased him and will soon take his life. He's lived with the real — not theoretical — knowledge that birthdays are not forever.

"But one day, I know, it will be otherwise," poet Jane Kenyon wrote about her own approaching death.

So now, I begin another year, having navigated this pandemic with no illness or other negative effects. May I be ever mindful of the gifts that come with each day.