The Birthday He Didn't Come To

My last birthday with my husband, he didn't come.

Steven was eight months out from the day he died, though neither of us knew that yet. He was finishing a prep. If you have ever loved someone through the back half of a contest prep, you already know what that sentence means. He was coming off drugs, he was depleted, and he was being an asshole.

I was having my birthday party at a friend's house. Several different friend groups were coming, people who did not know each other. I was the only common denominator in the room. Which meant I could not be late.

I finished my workout on time. So did Betty, Steven's training partner. She was heading out and asked if I wanted her to pick me up on the way. I said sure. Steven was still at the gym training. That did not bother me. I did not care if he was late. He could come when he came.

So I called him to tell him Betty was picking me up.

He told me that if I went with Betty, he wasn't coming.

There was a pause on my end of the phone. Not a strategic one. I was flabbergasted. Then I pushed back. Are you serious? You're going to be late. I don't want to be late. There are people there who don't know each other. It's my party. Come when you come.

He said it again. If you go with Betty, I'm not coming.

He said it three times.

We hung up. Betty came and got me. Steven did not come to my birthday party.

Embarrassment has a temperature

I could feel it on my skin all night. I could not dress it up or disguise it. I was standing in a room full of our mutual friends without my husband, and I had no reason to give anyone for why he wasn't there, because there wasn't one. He didn't want to come, so he didn't come.

That was the last birthday I had with him.

I want to be clear about something, because grief loves to collapse a person into their worst day.

Steven made it right.

Four months later, on Valentine's Day, he came to his senses. He filled my office with balloons and flowers. He brought me a day planner with a beautiful cover and a notepad tucked inside, because he knows I like having pen and paper around. And on the opening page of that notepad, he wrote me a letter. I still have it.

To my dearest wife,

I have been so scared lately. I know I haven't tended to your emotional needs & we have lost some of the intimacy & emotional honesty that we worked so hard to cultivate in our years together. That's right… years! I still feel like you are a dream. A gorgeous tornado who blew into my life & gracefully replaced everything I thought I needed with all the things I could ever want.

I want our future so badly. Nothing scares me more than not making your—no, our dreams into realities. God I love you. I love how you moan when you sleep. I love when your accent slips out when you're tired. I love how you aren't as hard on me as I am on myself. I love how you never let me dwell on my failures & how you never rub my nose in my mistakes. I could learn from you in that regard.

I want to be someone you're proud of—someone you brag about the way I brag about you. You bring out something in me. It's indescribable. It's this feeling of self-respect that I have always had to fake in the past.

I need to put our relationship into perspective because as much as I love being your business partner, I absolutely adore being your soulmate.

With all of me,
Papa

It is still my favorite letter, note, piece of writing of all time.

In that moment, I felt him again. The man I married. The warmth. The awareness. The presence. The love.

From that point, he stopped dumping his suffering into my lap. He assumed the cost of the sport without asking me to carry it for him.

The man was not that phone call. But that phone call is what sat on top of the pile when he was gone.

What I did with it

The first birthday after he died, I had a choice to make. I could sit in the pity of that memory and let October be a hole in the calendar, or I could go put something else on top of it.

So I flew to Utah. I did a rope swing jump into a canyon. I MC'd a powerlifting competition. I did a boudoir shoot.

The next year I jumped off the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho.

The year after that I went to Montana with four of my best friends and we hiked forty miles over five days. It is still one of the most tremendous bonding experiences of my life.

This year I'm getting a spa day.

That is it. No canyon, no bridge, no forty miles. I don't need this birthday to be spectacular, because the work is already done. I am not outrunning anything anymore. I am just choosing myself, which is the only thing any of those trips were ever actually about.

You are allowed to rewrite the day

If you have a date on the calendar that hurts, an anniversary, a birthday, a holiday, the day of the diagnosis, the day of the phone call, you are not obligated to hand that day over permanently to the worst version of what happened on it.

You do not have to earn the right to enjoy it. You do not have to wait until a certain amount of time has passed. And you do not have to do anything as dramatic as jumping off a bridge. The size of the gesture is irrelevant. The decision is the whole thing.

Choose yourself in that moment instead of choosing your grief.

Because here is the part that took me a while to understand. What happened on my last birthday with Steven was a moment. It was not a summary of who he was, and it was not a summary of what we were together. Grief will try to sell you the moment as the whole story. It is a liar. One bad day in a marriage is not the marriage. One bad memory attached to a date is not the date.

Go put something else on top of it.