30th Birthday...Four Years Later

This weekend, my husband arranged for some of my closest friends to join me to celebrate my 30th birthday, along with a fellow January baby who is one of my lovliest ladies. Now, if you have basic arithmetic skills, you may know that my birthday in a week is actually my 34th, which I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to admit, since I take great pride in my age and the experience I have gathered. But my 30th birthday was a non-event, despite people in my life who perhaps should have made it a bigger deal, and the promises of others to make up for it were part of a series of bad choices they made. It's not a tragedy, the missing of a milestone birthday, and the broken promises associated with them are minor. But my husband knows all of this, the result of being my friend for many years through multiple relationships. He knows that one of the recurring problems in past relationships was promises made in earnest and then forgotten. He inherited a legacy that he's decided to correct, rather than take the easier and entirely justified route of that being the past and decidedly not his problem.

So we had a 30th birthday. My girls came in, plus a few local friends, and we went to The Shakespeare Tavern and saw As You Like It, a show I hadn't seen. It was incredible - the cast was fantastic, the food was good, and the company was incredible. It was everything I could have wanted from my 30th birthday - someone who cares about me took the effort to arrange for women to come in from different states so I could have a weekend with some of the most important people in the world to me. I couldn't have asked for more than that.

Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman's death has made me incredibly sad. I've been processing it all day. The question of "why" is always one to consider, but with a celebrity, why does it matter so much?

I think when a celebrity who has had an effect on us through art dies, it brings forward the feelings of those we have lost that we did know personally. The music, movies, and theater created by the talented celebrities who can honestly be called "artist" (of whom both Alan Rickman and David Bowie were) create an emotional connection that mimics what we have between us as humans. It's one way, of course, but as anyone who has experienced unrequited feelings knows, that doesn't make it less of an emotional connection.

So in their death, we experience again all the feelings of friends and family we have lost, as well as the tragedy of "what else could they have created, given time?" All combined, it's no wonder we've all been upside down with the loss of such giants.

I had an incredible conversation earlier with a dear friend about death and loss, especially those that seem unfair. I am grateful for friends like him who can express their rage and anger at loss while allowing me to express grief, who don't lessen what I'm feeling. Talking it through is also made it easier, as it usually does. A burden shared...

Tonight we watched Dogma and Galaxy Quest in the name of Alan Rickman. If I had started the Harry Potter movies, I would have to watch them all and I don't know if I can watch him die tonight (Die Hard, Potter, many others). I needed comedy.

Always.