The Day the Music Died

Do Birthdays Expire?

The Birthdays They Left Behind

Birthdays can be fun—something to look forward to—or something to resent because they seem to come around faster than the extended-warranty calls about your car.

Some birthday celebrations are extensive and complicated, involving decorations, dinner reservations and a cake that requires structural engineering. Others amount to a Facebook notification and a thumbs-up from somebody you went to high school with but haven’t spoken to since 1981.

But what is the norm when the person is no longer celebrating birthdays? What do we do when someone we love has passed on?

What, exactly, is the etiquette for dead folks’ birthdays?

As a former newspaper person, I remember when families would pay for an advertisement wishing a deceased loved one a happy birthday.

At the time, it felt a little cringey to me. Did the afterlife still receive the local newspaper? And if so, was delivery included with a heavenly subscription?

Now we have social media. After someone dies, their Facebook page often continues right along without them. People can post birthday wishes, share memories and leave messages as though their loved one might still scroll through them later.

And maybe they will...

Unfortunately, I have inadvertently wished someone a happy birthday only to discover that person had died—and I did not know it.

Awkward.

Whatever the wording, a little warning could save the rest of us from enthusiastically posting, “Hope this is your best year yet!”

I think we struggle with how to honor the people we have lost because love does not know what to do with itself when the person is gone. It doesn't go away.

The reason all of this is on my mind is that August 31 would have been my first husband’s 70th birthday. Time to flood the internet with memorial photos and those that remember him will post a memory or a salutation, or a statement of what a great guy he was. 

He passed away long before social media, but on his birthday—and on the anniversary of his death—I still like to remind the world that he existed.

He was a part of our story that we do not want to erase.

The weirdest factoid is that his last birthday party we threw him, we celebrated his 40^th birthday with black balloons, all dressed in black funeral apparel, and he had a dirt cake with a tombstone for an over the hill celebration. 

Morbid memory but also, the inappropriate humor we as a family love.

Other ways people like to remember those that have died are in the form of a memorial.

Back in 1998, it was common to see a simple wooden cross at the site of a fatal wreck. Today, roadside memorials may include large floral arrangements, photographs, balloons or, when children were involved, stuffed animals.

I did not participate in that tradition for my first husband. For me, I do not want to memorialize the place where someone died.

We do not put a wooden cross on Granny’s recliner where she bit the dust.

I would rather remember the life than the location.

But that is me. I also do not visit graves very often.

I’m not sure where my mother failed, because I was raised to believe that if the family got together, a graveyard would eventually be involved. I spent hours—from childhood well into adulthood—roaming among tombstones being introduced to family I had never heard of.

Southern families do not need ancestry websites. We just need comfortable shoes, a cemetery map and an aunt who remembers everything.

I have purposely visited my late husband’s grave only once. It was the first anniversary of his death, and I went with our two sons. I checked the box.

For some people, visiting a grave brings comfort. For others, creating a roadside memorial feels right. Some cook a loved one’s favorite meal, tell the same old stories, post a photograph or quietly remember a date that the rest of the world has forgotten.

I respect all of it.

We grieve differently because we love differently. There is no single correct way to remember someone, and there is no expiration date on honoring a life.

Birthdays usually count the years a person has lived. After that person is gone, birthdays are yearly reminders that they lived.

So, on August 31, I will honor Norman, my first husband with a pictorial display of memories that although his birthday has come around 70 times, he only saw 41 of those. He left behind many birthdays.

And because death may end the birthdays, but it does not erase the life.