Why Celebrate Getting Older?

When I was young, we didn’t do a lot to celebrate birthdays in my house, maybe a homemade cake or your favorite dinner, but no outlandish parties with balloons and presents or friends and music. Birthdays were marked as route of passage and you just moved on. As I got older and lived on my own I began to meet people who made this day a special occasion.

It was kind of uncomfortable for me as I was not used to being in the spotlight. And as I got older still, the day of my birth became the day I looked around to see who was no longer there with me. My view on birthdays changed and now, I look forward to marking every passing year and sharing the day with my friends young and old. Let me share with you, the reasons this day is special to me.

Today is my 50th birthday (Feb. 2018) and I can’t be more excited. I can now use words like whippersnapper and Depends without looking insane. I’m not insane, no matter what my friends say. I’m sure a lot of people think I’m crazy for being excited about this milestone, but it has a special meaning for me. I hope that you will read the entire post.

Before I was born, I had a sister and a brother. They were born sometime in late February in 1963. Their official death date was February 26th, 1963. The girl was meant to be Lynda, instead she was baby Spargur. When I was 9, my cousin Phillip died. He was 7. For my 16th birthday, my childhood friend Jeffrey gave me roses. It was so sweet, he was 19. A few months later he was killed in a drive-by shooting. At 18, three of my classmates were killed before we graduated high school. They were headed to lunch and the driver lost control of the car and crashed into a telephone pole.

My 31st year started with the loss of a friend from work. He was also 31. He died from dehydration caused by the flu. Drink your water people! When I turned 47, I lost a very dear friend. Mark and I knew each other since we were teenagers. A few years earlier he was diagnosed with a debilitating disease that slowly took away his motor functions but left his brain intact. He decided to end his own life early.

When my Mom passed away, at the age of 64, her wish was to be cremated. We didn’t bury her ashes we put them in an urn. I had her remains for a few years and now my nephew has them. It was weird. I felt like I needed a place to go to talk to her. To remember her. Once my brother and I are gone and his kids are gone, there will be no one alive who knew her. It took me a while to figure that she will live on for as long as we live. She lives in our hearts. As do all the other people I have lost in my life.

My brother’s first wife, whom he divorced years ago but they remained friends, died of cancer. She was the age I am now. I will forever remember the time we spent together eating nachos and drinking slurpees from 7/11.

Every year my birthday is a moment when I can celebrate the lives of the people I have lost and to remind myself that life is shorter than we think. Don’t scoff at growing older, embrace it.

Celebrate the people who are no longer here and remember that some of them will have never reached the age you are now.