Today, my daughter should have turned forty-four years old.

We should have been celebrating my daughter’s birthday with her today.

Julie, my youngest daughter, my fourth child, was born on this day forty-four years ago. As only a mom can do, I recalled details of that day which belong only to me. As I think of listing those details, I wonder if anyone would even care what those details were other than Julie because after all, she is the one who most likely would have been interested in the details of her birth.

If she were alive, as evidenced by this recent FaceBook comment that showed up in my memories, she might have even wondered what I would be saying about her and her birthday on social media.

In 2009, when Julie inquired if she would get a blog post of “17 paragraphs,” she did indeed get a blog post written by me in which I celebrated her birth and her life.

A year later, in April of 2010, we celebrated Julie’s birthday in grand style with a huge family birthday celebration. I snapped many pictures that day of Julie surrounded by her sisters and some of just Julie and her dog. On that day, we never could have imagined that Julie would die by suicide just six weeks later.

Now, here we are ten years later. It seems hard to even imagine that a decade has passed since I last not only saw Julie alive, but also since we as a family celebrated her and her life with her in our midst. It seems hard to imagine what my youthful, impish, springtime fairy would be like if she were alive today and celebrating her forty-fourth birthday. She always had such a sense of fun and of whimsy. Would she still? She loved playing around with her nieces and nephews. Now, they are teens and young adults. I often wonder what her interactions with them at this stage of life would be like.

Julie’s birth and life brought so much joy to our family. She was the fourth child born to a family of five children. She moved easily between the brother/sister relationship and the sister/sister relationship. I often think of her as our family lynchpin, the one who seemed to hold the parts and pieces of our complicated family structure together. Her life is one that is easy to celebrate because she brought so much joy to us all.

And so on her birthday this year, I decided I wanted to go to the cemetery where her ashes are buried to celebrate her and the joy her life brought to my life. Little did I know that as with everything these days, that simple exercise of going to the cemetery for a moment of remembrance would become complex.

Grief and Birthday Celebrations in The Time of COVID 19

Grief seems to be a constant these days.  All of us seem to be suffering from a deep communal grief.  And yet for those of us whom have recently lost loved ones, or for those of us whom experience anniversary date grief, it seems that the normal grief responses are made all the more complex in these days of the novel coronavirus.  

 For me personally, I think the weight of grief has been a constant in my life for over a year as I experienced anticipatory grief as my younger sister and my mother have both been in the last days of their lives.  In September of 2019, my sister passed away, and then just one month ago, on March 2, 2020, my mother passed away at the age of 103.

 Normally, we would have already had a memorial service for my mother, and we would have gathered at the cemetery as a family to inter her ashes.  None of that has happened because of COVID 19.  Not only that, I don’t even know when we will be able to have services for her.  This disruption to the normal grief journey seems to have compounded the complex feelings of grief that I have felt since of her death.

 For the past twenty-seven days, my husband and I have self-isolated and have only left the house to either walk around the neighborhood each day or to go to the grocery store to pick up pre-ordered groceries.  Today, the day that marked my daughter’s birthdate, I told my husband I wanted to go to the cemetery to visit my daughter’s grave, and to visit the gravesite of my parents.  

 As we approached the cemetery, I began to worry that it might not be open.  I did not anticipate there being people around because no one is having funerals or formal burials at this time.  I did not even have flowers to place on the graves because I didn’t want to enter a store to buy flowers, and we have nothing in bloom at our home.

 Driving towards the section of the cemetery where my daughter is buried, I noticed that a car was parked in the same area where we usually park.  As we drove closer, I said to my husband, “It looks like someone else is near Julie’s gravesite.”  

 It took me us driving right up to the car that was parked on the road for me to realize that my daughter, her fiancé, and my granddaughter were the people gathered at Julie’s grave.  My daughter lives in northern Colorado, about two hours away from us, and I did not know she planned on coming to town.   I honestly did not know what to do when we parked the car and I realized who was there.  

 My daughter, very private in her expressions of grief, was on the ground crying in front of her sister’s grave.  My feelings and emotions were all over the place.  Should I leave her in the privacy of her grief moment, or should I go to her?  I was more concerned about how to support her than I was about the social distancing practices that I have strictly adhered to for weeks.  It honestly did not even occur to me to ask myself, should we stay six feet apart?  Or, should I put on my mask?  No, I just followed my mother’s heart and rushed to her side to give her comfort.  I also wanted to feel her arms around me.  I wanted her to give me comfort too.

 We didn’t visit long.  It all seemed awkward in a way.  I had interrupted my daughter’s private visit.  I felt guilt for rushing in to give and receive hugs.  I worried that I might have passed along this terrible virus, and I worried that I might have picked up the dreaded virus from my family even as I knew that they too had been careful about practicing social distancing.  

 These times are not normal.  They are not natural.  So many of those practices that give us comfort and support during difficult times have been stripped away.  The normal responses of giving and receiving hugs must be restricted.  

 Quite honestly, I’ll never forget how comforting it was to feel Amy’s hug and to smell her signature perfume as my face brushed against her hair.  

 Unfortunately, I also know that I will never forgive myself if I unknowingly transferred a potentially deadly virus to her.  I also know that she would never forgive herself if she transferred that same virus to me.  I just hope she realizes that if she did, it will not be her fault.  It will be mine.  I was the one who threw caution aside.  I hope nothing bad comes from my impulsivity.  Too late, after the hugs, I went to the car and got my mask.

 We took photos.  Amy brought beautiful flowers for Julie.  They were perfect because the bouquet had bright, colorful flowers in it that included gerbera daisies, the same flowers we selected to blanket Julie’s casket when she died.  

 Then, Amy handed me flowers.  That girl.  She is always so thoughtful.  I don’t think she has ever visited me in the last ten years or more that she has not brought me flowers.  She had daffodils for me, and a note.  She had intended to leave the flowers and the note on my porch as a surprise as they left town.

The note said, “Love you lots, mom. Thinking of you on this trying day. I wish I could give you a big hug. xoxo Amy.”

 Too soon, we said our goodbyes.  My husband joked that lunch was on him this time, but they could buy the next time they came to town.  It was all so odd. We couldn’t even go to lunch.

 Grief in the time of COVID 19 brings such weird and unexpected twists and turns.  Time will tell what it all means in the days to come.  In the meantime, Julie’s birthday was celebrated in a very unusual way, and she got a blog post. I didn’t count the paragraphs.