Your Birthday Still Belongs to You

Your Birthday Still Belongs to You

Growing Older Than the Brother I Lost

Today, November 13, you would have turned 62 years old, Dean.

I find myself sitting with that number. Sixty-two. The same age I am now. There’s something both ordinary and extraordinary about that. We were born in the same year, and I suppose I always imagined we would grow older alongside one another, sharing the years as family, as chosen siblings, and as dear friends.

You were Annie’s husband and you are Zach’s dad, which technically made you my brother-in-law. But that title never quite captured what you were to me. You were my chosen brother and beloved friend, someone who became family not simply through marriage, but through friendship, laughter, love, and the life we shared as chosen family.

I imagined us growing older as brothers and sisters do, teasing one another about birthdays, sharing holidays and family gatherings, and watching our lives unfold through all the ordinary and extraordinary changes that come with the passing years. I imagined a lifetime of friendship, accumulating decades of stories, inside jokes, memories, and experiences that become part of a shared history.

But you didn’t get to grow old, Dean. And I have.

Sometimes I wonder what you would look like today. Would your hair have gone gray? Would you still laugh at the same ridiculous things? Would you have found new passions, new ways of seeing the world? Would we still be watching movies together, laughing at something perhaps no one else found quite as funny?

I imagine we would.

And I wonder who you would have become. Not because the man you were wasn’t enough, but because none of us is finished becoming. We are always evolving, discovering, making mistakes, finding our way. At least, we are when life gives us the opportunity.

You never got the chance to discover the man you might have been at 62. And I never got the chance to know him.

I wish we both had.

Remembering You, Not Just How You Died

I remember your love of movies, particularly Spinal Tap. I think I loved watching your excitement almost as much as the movie itself. And The Princess Bride, a movie that will forever carry memories of those early days with you and Annie. It’s funny how something as simple as a movie can become a doorway to another time. One familiar line, one ridiculous scene, and suddenly you feel close enough to reach.

And of course, there was Elvis. You loved Elvis, both his music and his movies. I can still think of you whenever I hear one of his songs or come across one of those old films. I wonder how many times we might have watched them together over the years, laughing at the familiar scenes or singing along to songs we already knew by heart.

And then there’s It’s a Wonderful Life. I still love that movie, Dean, and every year Annie, Zach, and I watch it together. It’s become one of those traditions that carries more than the story unfolding on the screen. It carries memories of you, of our family, and of all the years we’ve shared. I sometimes wonder what you would think of us still watching it, year after year. I imagine you’d be right there with us, enjoying a movie that has somehow become part of the way we remember you.

And isn’t that something? A movie about the ways one person’s life touches so many others, often in ways they never fully recognize. I wonder whether you knew just how deeply your life touched ours. How the things you loved became part of our lives, and how something as ordinary as watching a movie can continue to connect us with you decades later.

I love the memories that bring laughter before tears. They remind me that before there was grief, there was life. There was friendship and love and the ordinary pleasure of being together.

I don’t want your story to be reduced to the way you died. And yet I cannot pretend that the way you died didn’t change everything.

You took your own life, Dean. And I was the one who found you.

Even now, all these years later, writing those words carries weight. Your death divided my life into a before and an after. There were things I believed about life, love, choice, and the people we hold dear that I could never believe quite the same way again.

For a long time, the circumstances of your death occupied so much space in my remembering that I sometimes wonder whether they crowded out the fullness of your life. Not because I forgot who you were, but because the experience of losing you was so enormous.

Today, on your birthday, I want to make room for all of you.

The Years Between Then and Now

At 62, I know things I didn’t know when you died. I’ve lived through experiences that have changed me, challenged me, softened me, and sometimes cracked me wide open. I have loved and lost, questioned things I once believed, and discovered that some of life’s most meaningful lessons arrive through experiences I would never have chosen.

I wonder what we would talk about today. Would we laugh about getting older? Would we disagree about something happening in the world? Would we sit together and talk about the things that once felt impossible to say?

And I wonder what you would think of me now. Of the woman I’ve become, the work I do, the stories I write, the ways I have learned to be in relationship with myself and with others. Would you recognize me? Would you be surprised by some of the directions my life has taken?

I imagine we would have some wonderful conversations. Perhaps some difficult ones, too.

There are things I understand now that I didn’t understand then. Things about suffering, about shame, about the ways we can become trapped inside our own thoughts and beliefs. Things about how little we sometimes know of another person’s inner world, even when we love them deeply.

And I wonder whether those understandings might have changed some of our conversations.

Of course, the Dean I imagine at 62 is a creation of my own longing. I don’t actually know who you would have become. None of us knows who another person might become, or even who we ourselves will be a year from now.

Perhaps that’s part of the ache of losing someone too soon. We don’t simply grieve the person we knew. We grieve the conversations we never had, the celebrations we didn’t share, the ordinary Tuesday afternoons that never came, and all the possibilities that ended with their life.

We grieve a future that existed only in possibility, but somehow felt as though it belonged to us.

The Life That Continues Through Zach

And yet, Dean, while I don’t get to witness how your life would have unfolded, I do get to witness something extraordinary. I get to watch your son, Zach, my dear nephew, living his own life.

A life filled with music, love, excitement, discovery, and all the possibilities that come with being alive. I get to watch him becoming the man he is, making his own choices, finding his own way, creating a life that belongs uniquely to him.

And yes, there is grief there, too. Grief for what he never got to experience with you, for the father he didn’t have the opportunity to know in all the ways a son might wish to know his dad. For the conversations, the ordinary moments, the guidance, the laughter, and the relationship that might have unfolded as he grew.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to watch the two of you together today. What would your relationship have become? What music would you have shared? What would you have talked about? Would you have discovered new things about each other, challenged one another, laughed together, or found yourselves disagreeing about something only to laugh about it later?

I wonder whether you would see yourself in him. Whether you would recognize some familiar expression, some way of moving through the world, or a piece of yourself reflected back through the man your son has become.

And I find myself wanting to tell you about him, about the life he is creating, the people he loves, the adventures he is having, and the beautiful, complicated fullness of being human that he is experiencing.

I know Zach’s life is not a replacement for yours. He is not here to fulfill the possibilities you never got to explore. His life is his own, with all its joy, challenges, discoveries, and yes, grief.

But I do find something deeply moving in witnessing his becoming.

And perhaps, in some way I don’t entirely understand, I get to know another part of you through knowing him.

What If Grief Was Never Meant to End

Recently, I came across a teaching about grief and Indigenous mourning traditions that stayed with me. What caught my attention was the recognition that grief can be given time, space, ceremony, and community. That there can be a place for mourning and a place for returning to the fullness of life, without requiring that love or remembrance come to an end.

Different Indigenous peoples have their own distinct practices, and I wouldn’t pretend to fully understand traditions I haven’t lived. But something about honoring grief, rather than simply trying to get past it, resonated deeply with me.

We often approach grief in our society as something to recover from. We speak of moving on, finding closure, getting back to normal, as though there is a destination where the loss will no longer affect us.

But what if grief isn’t something we are meant to complete? What if it is a relationship that continues to evolve?

I think about how different my relationship with you is today from what it was in those early years after your death. There was a time when remembering you brought me immediately to the shock, the questions, and the circumstances of finding you.

Today, I can remember your laughter. I can watch a movie and smile. I can wonder what you would think about something happening in my life. The sadness hasn’t disappeared, but it no longer occupies every corner of my remembering.

I’ve come to understand that healing isn’t necessarily the absence of pain. Sometimes it’s the capacity to hold the fullness of an experience without being consumed by any one part of it.

I can feel anger about the life you didn’t get to live and compassion for the suffering you may have experienced. I can miss you deeply and still love the life I have lived since losing you. I can wish you had made a different choice without reducing you to that choice.

And perhaps most importantly, I can live fully without feeling that I am leaving you behind.

Beyond the Body, Beyond What I Know

And then there is another kind of curiosity that has grown in me over the years, Dean. One that reaches beyond the life you might have lived and into the mystery of what happens when we leave these bodies behind.

I often wonder what your experience is now, if experience continues at all in a way we might understand. What is it like to no longer be held within the limitations of a physical body? Is there an awareness that continues? A consciousness that is no longer shaped by all the fears, pain, and stories we carry while we’re here?

Do you get to witness us?

Do you see Zach and the life he is creating? Do you see Annie, the family, the people who loved you and whose lives continued after yours ended? Do you see how much has changed, how much we have grown, and how the world has unfolded in all the years since you left?

And if you do, what is that experience like for you?

I find myself curious about what is, not simply what might have been.

My spiritual journey over the years has opened me to possibilities I once might not have considered. I’ve explored consciousness, the mystery of life and death, and the possibility that there is so much more to existence than what we experience through our physical senses.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what happens when we die. There are things I believe, things I’ve experienced, and things that remain beautifully mysterious to me.

But I do know that I feel you near sometimes.

Not in a way I can prove or even fully explain. Sometimes it is simply a feeling, a moment of unexpected closeness, a memory that arrives with such clarity that for an instant the distance between us seems to disappear.

And sometimes I wonder whether that closeness is something more than memory.

Perhaps there is a part of consciousness that continues in ways we cannot yet comprehend. Perhaps love itself is experienced differently when we are no longer bound by these bodies and the lives we knew.

I don’t know.

But I am curious.

And I like imagining that somewhere, somehow, you might be curious about us, too. That perhaps you witness the unfolding of our lives from a perspective I cannot yet understand.

Maybe someday I’ll know. Or perhaps I won’t need to.

For now, I can live with the mystery and appreciate the moments when I feel you close.

The Questions That Remain

For a long time, your death brought questions that seemed impossible to answer. Why? How could this happen? Was there something I missed? Something I could have said or done differently?

I think those questions are familiar to many who have lost someone to suicide. We search the past for clues, revisiting conversations and moments, sometimes assigning meaning to things that, at the time, seemed entirely ordinary.

Over time, my questions have changed. I find myself less interested in finding one definitive answer and more curious about the complexity of being human. About the suffering we carry, the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways those stories shape what we believe is possible.

I have come to understand that we never fully know another person’s inner experience. We can love them deeply, know their habits, recognize their laughter, understand their history, and still not know everything happening inside them.

That understanding doesn’t erase the wish that things had been different, but it has softened my relationship with the unanswered questions.

I’ve learned that compassion doesn’t require complete understanding, and forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t hurt. It doesn’t erase the consequences of what happened or require me to make peace with every part of it.

Perhaps forgiveness, at least for me, has become less about finding an explanation and more about loosening my grip on the demand that there must be one.

There are questions I may carry for the rest of my life. And perhaps that’s okay. I don’t need to solve your death in order to continue loving you.

A Different Kind of Birthday Celebration

As I sit here thinking about your birthday, I find myself wondering what it means to celebrate someone who is no longer living.

There will be no candles for you to blow out, no gifts to unwrap, no teasing you about turning 62. But perhaps there can still be a celebration.

Perhaps telling your story is its own kind of ritual. Remembering your laughter, speaking your name, allowing the love and sadness to sit beside one another without needing either to disappear.

As a writer and storyteller, I understand more and more how powerful the simple act of remembering can be. Every time we tell a story about someone who has died, we bring some part of their life into the present. Not in a way that denies their absence, but in a way that acknowledges their continuing place in our lives.

And maybe that’s part of what I’m doing today.

Not trying to bring you back, not pretending you are still here in the way I wish you were, but making room for the relationship that continues within me.

Your death sent me into questions about life, suffering, love, and what it means to be human that I continue to explore today. It was not a gift. I would never romanticize your death or suggest that it needed to happen for me to become who I am. I would have preferred a thousand ordinary birthdays with you.

But I cannot deny that the experience shaped me.

One of the things I’ve learned is that we can honor what has grown in us after a loss without needing to be grateful for the loss itself. We don’t have to make sense of everything to continue living fully, and we don’t have to leave someone behind in order to move forward.

Perhaps that’s what this birthday is reminding me. Life continues, not always in the ways we imagined, and certainly not without loss. But it continues to offer us opportunities to love, to laugh, to create, to connect, and to become.

And I want to keep saying yes to those opportunities.

Happy Birthday, Brother

So today, Dean, I’m thinking about you at 62.

I’m thinking about the laughter we shared, the movies we watched, the Elvis songs you loved, and the friendship that was so much bigger than the title of brother-in-law. I’m thinking about everything we missed and everything we had.

I’m thinking about the young man you were and the older man you never got to become. I’m thinking about Zach and the life he is living, and how much I wish you could have shared those years together.

And I’m thinking about the woman I’ve become in the years since you left.

I wish you could know her.

But perhaps, in ways I don’t understand, you do.

I wish we could sit together and talk about all of it. I wish I could hear your laughter again, not just in my memory but in the room beside me. I wish we could look back on our lives and laugh at the foolish things we once thought were so important, marvel at the ways we’ve changed, and maybe even forgive ourselves and each other for the things we didn’t know then.

I wish we could talk about being 62.

Today I am 62, and you would have been 62. We were supposed to grow old together as family, as chosen siblings, as friends. We didn’t get to.

But I get to remember you. I get to speak your name. I get to witness your son becoming the man he is, and I get to carry the friendship we shared into the years you never had the chance to experience.

I don’t know what exists beyond this life, Dean. I don’t know what you can see or what you might know. But I remain curious, and I remain open to the possibility that love and consciousness are far more expansive than we understand.

What I do know is that your life mattered. Your laughter mattered. Your love mattered. And the relationships you created continue to touch the lives of those who knew you.

You still matter.

I don’t have to stop missing you to celebrate my life, and I don’t have to find an ending to our relationship simply because your life ended. There is room for the love, the sorrow, the memories, the mystery, and all the living that is still ahead of me.

Happy birthday, Dean.

I love and miss you, brother.

Love,

Jenny