The List

Happy, Happy Birthday!
Today's Your Special Day!
Happy, Happy Birthday!
That's Why I'm Here to Say!
oh Happy, Happy Birthday!
May All Your Dreams Come True!
Happy, Happy Birthday!
From Me-e-e To You!

Jill is the first one to call barring any major catastrophe. She likes to make sure I know that she loves me the most. And she likes to sing me the Birthday Song when I'm still warm and squishy from a restful night's sleep. With no catastrophe to speak of, my first phone call today was from her. She called five more times throughout the day. In her last message she told me the story of how mom and dad were visiting her on her birthday last year and she woke up to find that mom had placed Post-Its all over the house that read "Happy Birthday, Jilly". So in her own special way, as she put it, she was calling me throughout the day to make sure I felt as loved as she did on her birthday; and loved I did feel.

Since I moved around so much growing up, I am proud to say I've wrangled quite an extensive "friends" list. This list is great for traveling cross-country because I always have a place to stay. It is also great on my birthday because I am guaranteed at least six phone calls, a dozen emails and birthday cards trickling in for the two weeks surronding my birthday.

I like to draw my birthday out. Similar to Christmas, the fun is over when it's time to clean up the wrapping paper, so I make it last as long as possible. Last night Logic agreed to let me open the gifts he gave me and then this morning I unwrapped the new Wellies from his family. But there was still a box and half a dozen cards that I wanted to save until I got home from work. So when we returned home, I was excited to see another four cards in the mail for me! Before opening the cards Logic was dying for me to open the last box, so I obliged. It was from Lilikoi and Ranger and it was full of my favorite things: PB M&Ms, Lush bath products and some Hawaiian tea.

Next I decided to open my cards. Organizing them in the order I wanted to open them, I noticed that the card from my Godmother had a return address from California even though she lives in Washington. I knew she had a sister near San Francisco and assumed that she was visiting her. When it came time to open her card, which she sends every year, I was surprised to find a note fall out with a pictures of the Virgin Mary on it. This wasn't typical for her. She usually sent me cute cards with puppies or flowers on it but I still turned it over expecting to see the familiar hand-writing wishing me a Happy Birthday. When I turned the card over, I saw that it was a Mass Card*. What happened next took a few minutes for me to register.

My breath caught in my throat and I grappled to find the piece of paper that fell out of the envelope when I hastily pulled out the card. Finding the paper, I flipped it over. Logic looked on, expecting me to tell him how my Godmother was doing and to read him the kind words she most definitely had written. He was nearly as shocked as I was when the words "she's dead" fell out of my mouth. The next few minutes, I just sat on the couch reading and re-reading the card:

We are saddened to let you know that our sister, Margaret, died on September 21, 2008at Lourdes Medical Center in Pasco, Washington due to complications of cancer.

Please remember our family and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, of which she was a member for 52 years.

With love,
(her family)

I put the note down, exasperated.
"They didn't even say how she died!".
Logic picked up the note and scoured every line.
"Cancer", he whispered.
I had read the card five times and missed that fucking C word every time. I must have seen it but couldn't absorb it; didn't want to believe it.
I was still expecting my birthday card.

She was the nurse in my delivery room. And since the day I was born when she cradled me before handing me to my dad, she has always sent me a card. She would usually include a cheesy gift that I would be embarrassed to show anyone. Being a nun, she was delightfully out of touch when it came to the latest toys and instead sent me a home-made apron or a magnet with my name on it or an oven mitt. Things I took for granted because I didn't expect the gifts to stop coming. But as I sit here, reeling from the news, I wish I had shown that rooster magnet off to all of my friends and that I'd worn that apron at least once. Now I don't even know where they are.

I know she wouldn't be hurt by my lack of interest in her gifts. She and I both knew that it wasn't about the gifts at all. It was about that day, now twenty nine years ago, when she helped my parents bring me into this world and how special we both knew we were to each other.

Every year, after opening her card and the little trinket that she spent her time searching for, buying, wrapping and shipping, I would sit down and write her a Thank You card that not only included a detailed list of everything she sent, but also an update on how I was doing. One time I even asked her when her birthday was so that I could send HER a card and make sure she felt as loved as I did on my birthday but she never responded with an answer. No, she didn't want anything from me; except for the rare card and the even rarer visit to see her.

I was the closest thing she would ever have to a child of her own. She joined the convent at an early age and devoted most of her life as a nurse to working in the Delivery Room, counselor teenage mothers and, later in life, devoting most of her time to AIDS patients and the elderly. She sacrificed her own possibility for children so that she could help other people's children into the world, help them when they found themselves scared and pregnant at sixteen, suffering from a weakened immune system as a result of the AIDS virus, and comforting them as they eased their way into death.

Today I did not get a birthday card from Sister Margaret Mary,
(Happy, Happy Birthday...)
but the absence of that card
(Today's Your Special Day...)
is much deeper than the lack of its delivery.
(Happy, Happy Birthday)
Instead,
(May All Your Dreams Come True)
as the day winds down,
(Happy, Happy Birthday)
the one she helped usher me into,
(From Me-e-e To You)
I find myself with one less friend on the list.

*card sent out to loved ones asking for their prayers.