BIRTHDAYS AREN'T DREADED OVER HERE!

I was going to continue to blog about holidays and grief, but please allow me to digress this once to comment on my birthday, yesterday.  I LOVE BIRTHDAYS!!!!  I told my son that I feel like I am alive at my own funeral!  He didn't much care for the analogy, but he totally understood, considering my life work.  Ha!  I mean, really, I think I spent the entire day, either on the phone, or on Facebook, reading all the birthday wishes or receiving texts or opening cards, (that had arrived earlier in the week, but I wouldn't allow myself to open them until THE day!)  Wanna know the best part?  I stayed in my PJ's the entire day!!  I love Sundays like that, birthday or not!  I have learned not to apologize or to feel guilty for enjoying such carefree days.  As much as I love the feeling of accomplishing something, I also love the feeling of staying present, not rushing to get somewhere else, while totally missing out on the here and now.  Being here, at home, surrounded by loved ones, not necessarily in the flesh but in spirit because of modern technology........that, to me, is what life is REALLY all about! NOTHING is more important than relishing the love, basking in it, bathing in it, smothering myself in it!  In fact, when everything died down and the phone stopped ringing in the evening, it was so quiet!  Too quiet!!  Where did everyone go?  Back to their lives, of course.  But me?  I was so much different from the person I was when I awoke that morning, because I knew more than ever before, how loved I am!   And yes, I'm older.  But my goodness gracious, I will gladly pay that price to learn that so many people are happy that I was born!  When I receive words such as these from my son, who wrote, "You are the greatest Mom in the history of the world!" (I haven't even received his gift and card yet, so this is only a small sample of what is surely to come, just from past experience!) and from my daughter, who wrote in a book she bought me, called, LOVE LIFE: "You are unique, exuberant and a breath of air, a ray of sun.  You love life, you live life and you are SO important to my life, " or from her sweet husband, "You exemplify loving life.  And you have given that gift to your children," and cards and written words that brought tears to my eyes from my siblings and parents...........well, do I mind getting older?  Not if it means I can have another year, and another and another and another, hopefully, to be embraced by friends and family!!  I'll take it!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!