Your birthday is tomorrow. You would have been 59 years old. Most people were surprised when you told them how old you were. You never looked your age, even though you worked outdoors your whole life. You had a baby face and an eternal youth inside you. Maybe that’s one of the things that I loved about you from the moment I met you because I felt the same way myself. I’ve always said I’m 22 in my own mind, no matter what my chronological age is. They say that youth is a state of mind and I really do believe that.
I spent the last 36 birthday’s of your life with you. Tomorrow will the first one I won’t see you lying next to me in the bed and say “Happy birthday, Kenny! I love you!” when you first wake up, and then kiss you all over your face. I’ll still say it, but you won’t be here, at least not in the physical sense. I hope you can hear me up in Heaven in the clouds when I do say it. I hope you’ll catch the hugs and kisses I throw up there to you and send ones back down to me.
I can’t even remember what we did last year on your birthday. I don’t know if we went out to eat somewhere or if we stayed home. I can’t remember if I gave you a gift or a card because we didn’t always do that each holiday or birthday. Over the years gifts and cards became much less important than just being in one another’s presence. Gifts and cards are expendable. The memories of time spent together is where the real treasures lie at.
Some years on your birthday you went surfing at the beach. Paddling out into the ocean on a surfboard was something you loved to do since you were about 8 years old. The water was where you found your calm serenity. No other place on Earth did that for you. In the last ten years or so you hadn’t really done any surfing and I know you really missed it.
I told you many times that walking barefoot on the sand was a way to ground yourself and that’s something you really needed to do. I said so often that we needed to go walk barefoot on the beach together but we just never did. That’s one of my biggest regrets since you died–that we didn’t do that one thing that would have brought you so much peace and joy.
I wonder if your birthday in Heaven this year will be spent paddling out into the clear blue water on a surfboard? Will you sit on your board in quiet anticipation, waiting for the perfect wave to swell up behind you? When that waves comes, will you paddle as fast as you can and then hop up on your feet and ride it all the way to the shore? Will you hold your hand down into the water as your board carries you through the tube? Will you shake the water out of your thick, curly red hair like you always did when you came back up to the surface at the end of that ride? Will you repeat this same thing over and over again until sheer exhaustion takes over and your arms feel numb?
I’d like to think that Heaven is to each one of us what we perceived it to be while we were still alive–that it encompasses every minute aspect of what we truly loved to do in life. Whatever brought us joy and happiness is what our own personal Heaven has to be because one of the definitions of Heaven is “a place, state, or experience of supreme bliss“. Isn’t that what Heaven is? That’s what I’ve always heard it is.
Maybe every day in Heaven is your birthday. Maybe you surf in the vast ocean every single day up there and you live in an eternal state of peace and serenity like you did while you were surfing down here on Earth. Maybe that’s what birthday celebrations up in Heaven look like. I sure hope they do for you.