PHANTOM BIRTHDAYS

Sunday, the 16^th of May would have been my friend Kate Billings’ 53^rd birthday.  For years, I was convinced it was on the 19^th.  I told her once, that as she got older, she’d appreciate having a few extra days at her previous age.  We never considered that her nagging cough in October 2008 would be diagnosed as Stage 3 non small cell lung cancer.  She would be gone 11 months later. 

Kate and I were friends for more than 20 years, and what I don’t want to do is focus on the last, and most painful one of her life.  As she was so full of it (life, that is…).  She was a successful television producer, who at 40 decided to chuck it all and pursue acupuncture.  Upon graduating from the New England School of Acupuncture and getting her license, she moved to Falmouth on Cape Cod.  In short order, she had a thriving practice and a fantastic guy who shared her deep love of sailing.

I had never been on a sailboat before, when on a rather cold, windy, rainy, nasty day, I joined Kate and some of her friends on her first boat, The Dolce Bella.  I spent a good part of that sail below deck trying my damnedest not to get sick.  While I managed to keep it together on the inside, on the outside I had turned as green as the bay.  This was not lost on my captain, who from that day forward – and in spite of my eventually earning my sea legs – trotted out that story at every opportunity.  Several years later, we were on the water with some other friends and she started to tell the tale.  About two sentences in, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “This story is a lot funnier when you’re not here.”  At her memorial service, I was reunited with the original folks from that first sail.  Nearly 20 years had passed, and it took some time for us to place each other.  Then, a bolt of recognition, “Weren’t you the one who turned green…?”  I could hear Kate laughing.

And so as we muddle through this black mark of firsts on the calendar…first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first Easter, without her, I find myself thinking about those who’ve passed, and how their birthdays hang in limbo.  How do we mark them? 

Someone once told me that on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, they find someone who didn’t know the deceased, and tell them a story about that person, so that they live anew.

Perhaps that’s what I’m doing here, but on the day she came into the world, rather than the one on which she left us.  As the months pass and the inevitability of life washes over us, these phantom birthdays serve as personal holidays.  A chance to remember, to celebrate, or at the very least, an occasion to look up, feel the breeze and whisper into it, “I love you, Katie B.”