Pete‘s birthday came around in a week that also included Mother‘s Day and the arrival of his death certificate.
It was a week where I probably consumed a little more alcohol that my GP may advocate is a healthy choice.
Pete’s Birthday was a particularly challenging day.
I have the ability to memorialise his Facebook page but just haven’t got around to actually using that ability, because - other stuff in my days I’m dealing with...
So when his birthday rolled around the friendly little notifications from Facebook appeared reminding people ‘It’s Pete Mecham’s Birthday today! Send him good wishes ...’
My phone has a night setting on it so I don’t get bings all night, and at 7am when it switched off, my phone started binging off its perch with amazingly heartfelt messages from friends and family.
By 7.30am I had cried. By 9am I had sobbed. And by 9.30am I had finished putting together a memorial video and posted it on Facebook because this making people cry before morning tea thing works both ways ...
I didn‘t want to spend his birthday alone and so along with my parents and a couple of friends who had travelled down to make sure we weren’t alone on the day, I called on The Village to come and drink champagne and raise a glass to him.
And it was about as good a night as you could hope for when you are gathering together friends to ‘celebrate’ your dead husband’s birthday.
There were tears. Smiles. Laughs. Stories. Memories. And lots of drinks and chinking glasses and nodding skyward saying ‘Happy Birthday‘.
But like most things we got through this year, there have been firsts that we just need to plough through as best we can. And I reckon he’d think the gathering we had and the quantities of good champagne drunk in his name was a pretty good way to plough through May 17 this year.
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