best day of the year

Tomorrow my dead husband would be 51 years old, and my alive boyfriend will be 51 years old. 

Isn't that super weird?

It'll be my fifth attempt to celebrate their birthdays on the same day, and I'm not sure repetition has made me any better at it. On the first May 23rd, I drove to Thomas' place in Philly for lunch, handed him a gift, and burst into tears.

I learned that they were born on the very same day on our first date. Also gleaned from that conversation: like Mike, Thomas grew up in a Catholic family and has three sisters. I asked for a tour of his (visible) tattoos that night, so didn't learn until later about Jacques Derrida's face inked on Thomas' shoulder. Mike went to grad school in part to learn about him from a particular scholar, and once, in the pre-GPS era, wound up chauffeuring Derrida to dinner during a conference; thank goodness Jacques was unaware that Mike possessed the worst sense of direction on the planet. Despite this they somehow arrived on time, without incident.

This strange cosmic alignment feels like God taking me firmly by the shoulders and saying: you can't have a second love in your life without confronting the fact that you do because you lost your first to tragic illness and death, because of the person you became in the aftermath, because many realities live inside you. It is all deeply, intimately connected; don't try and pretend it isn't!

Once, lying in bed in the harrowing days after his stem cell transplant, Mike and I were talking about what would happen after he died. I didn't want to be having that conversation. I remember looking away at the blue walls, the embroidered bedspread, anywhere but his face. He said something about how I'd probably have another husband someday. 

But I don't want another husband, I said, suddenly turning to him. I have a husband! 

Yes, he replied. But after I die, we won't be married anymore. Until we are parted by death. That's what we said to each other. 

That was more than I could take in at the time. What could he possibly mean? Of course we would still be married after he died. 

But he was right. I am a widow and we aren't married anymore. And the idea of marrying again? Now I kinda like the idea. I even like that I like it. On May 23rd God shines a light on the fact that the me who once curled over in pain at the very idea of having a different husband, and the me who smiles thinking about how on my wedding day my girls could style me however they'd like for once live in the same body. 

The desperately besotted twenty year old, the young mother reading aloud contentedly to her children, the purist, the perfectionist, the philosopher's wife who too often swallowed her anger, the caregiver, the advocate, the cook, the yogi, the sounding board, the woman uncertain if she would ever find her own professional footing, the tentative writer, the woman who was too quick to turn away from her own heart to accommodate the needs of others. Mike knew all those parts of me well. 

He didn't live to know the other parts that have grown stronger in his absence, and how the aforementioned parts have morphed and stretched, as our marvelous children grow older and I become more closely acquainted with my own heart. My confidence and skillfulness as a therapist, widowhood-anchored strength, growing comfort with my own imperfections, intentional efforts to release the preoccupation with being good. Now I can be boundaried, pissed, absurd, disagreeable. Not often. But it's possible. I treasure that possibility! I can be a protagonist who lets herself want things, all kinds of things, including a middle-aged, serious, playful, inconveniently long-distance love with a man born on May 23rd.

Mike always said it was the best day of the year. 

Thomas is evidence supporting that claim. How wonderful that he was born and lived a whole life whose paths curved closely to - but never touched - my own, until our respective contained multitudes collided at the moment they did. And that he generously and patiently makes space for my mixed up, grief-tinted May 23rd feelings - and on his birthday no less! 

I can't wait to see him tomorrow.