I’m another year older. While I ponder what aging is doing to my skin and my joints, my mind stumbles onto something bittersweet. This birthday, this celebration where I get to be another year older. I get to think about wrinkles and knee pains. I get another wish, as I blow out my 38 candles (ok, only 11 for space reasons). I get to savor the gifts and hugs of the love of my children. I wonder why me? Why do I get that? This is my third birthday since Tony died. And next week he would have been 40. Why me and not him? I don’t know, I will never get to know why in this lifetime. I work hard to let that ‘why’ go. To tell that thought, it will never have an answer that will ever be enough for me.

I have done lot of reading and searching for answers, in the hunt for the illusive ‘why’. The more I searched, the more I prayed, the more I hoped for some detail, some reason, the more clear it became that finding the answer we want is just not possible. The human mind is just not capable of understanding the BIG picture why’s. No matter how much explaining or detail we could be given or shown, we would never think there was a reason good enough to justify our grief, our loss. And isn’t that the truth…that no answer to why would ever suffice.

We can also attach that why to slews of sentences in many of life’s situations. Why him, why me, why now, why not later, why don’t my children get to be loved by their biological father on this earth, why doesn’t his family get to keep him in their lives? If only we didn’t have the word ‘why’. But isn’t it our nature to wonder why, to need to know why, to find the answers to life’s questions. I love learning new things, I read almost exclusively non-fiction books for this reason. And watching my children explore and learn their world can be truly amazing. Why does day turn to night? Why do plants grow? Why do we have to go to school? Why does the moon look different every night? The answers to these questions grow their understanding of the world and how it works. But why do some people have diseases and others don’t, and why did daddy die? These are a couple of the many questions I can’t fully answer.

If we can turn why into how, it makes things a little easier. How wonderful was my 37th year? How can my life honor his memory? How can we love them when they are gone? How do people get sick? How did daddy die?

Can we turn off why and how sometimes too? Can we just be?

I want to. I try to. I live like I’m dying more often then not. Because, I am…we all are. But I don’t want living like I’m dying to look like fear and anxiety…but let’s be honest, so often it does. I’d much rather it look like passion and joy. I want to embrace that life is precious, unique, sometimes fragile, and not to be wasted. It’s in the moments where deaths imminence grows fear in me, that I try to live and love much harder. I try not to take stock, but to take time. I let my smile grow wide and hopeful as I soak it in like a sun bath on the beach, there is no where else I would rather be.

I spent a lot of time this weekend creepily staring at my husband, memorizing his face, cherishing the way he looks while he sleeps. I fear something unexpected happening to him. I fear being too happy. And I am so happy. This is what marrying a widow looks like. It looks like insane love mixed with the experiences of fear. I have heard it said in the widow community, “if you haven’t met a woman who loves like me, you have never met a widow.”

I hugged my children tighter this weekend, I tried to touch them whenever they came near. I let them know they were special and loved. They made me feel so special and loved. They cooked for me, wrapped and decorated for me, sang to me. I laughed as they did a “birthday dance” for me, and I cried as I prayed thanks for them and for this year I was given.

I tell my husband, “I adore you and I’m afraid.” He puts my hand over his heart and he says “Can you feel that? I’m still here.” And I love him even more.

I am so grateful to be blessed with another birthday and my wish, as I blew out those candles, was that there will be another one next year.