Birthdays and Other Milestones
The first of many more firsts without Michael
One year ago today I woke up alone on my birthday. I had a lazy morning getting ready to visit Michael at Princess Margaret Hospital in the general men’s ward at the start of the morning visiting hour. We’d taken him to the emergency room (A&E) the night before, just to be safe, because he’d been excessively fatigued and had briefly blacked out at work. They’d admitted him to do further testing. It was on the way to visit him on my birthday that the figurative ticking time bomb was tossed into our world when Michael was told he had Acute Leukemia. We’d later learn it was a particularly brutal form, Mixed Phenotype Acute Leukemia (MPAL), a rare combination of both Myeloid and Lymphoblastic blood cancers.
Today I woke up alone on my birthday once again. This time there was nothing to get ready for. I’m sitting in the debris and rubble of that same bomb which finally exploded a couple weeks ago when Michael left this world. Today my color-coded wall calendar shows my birthday, plus the one year anniversary of Michael’s diagnosis. Tomorrow shows Christmas, plus the six month anniversary of Michael’s bone marrow transplant. I’d filled in all these milestones many months ago.
No part of me believed Michael would not be here at the one year mark of knowing he had cancer. We never entertained the thought he would not be here at the six month mark of the transplant meant to save his life. He was doing great, and then suddenly he wasn’t.
He was scheduled to have his quarterly bone marrow biopsy yesterday, to confirm that Benjamin’s healthy transplanted cells continued to thrive and form new bone marrow, leaving no space for Michael’s own mutated cells to start making more cancer. When he made the appointment last month, he could have picked any day of this week for the painful procedure. Together we chose December 23rd for the same reason we took him to the A&E last year on the 23rd… let’s just get this out of the way, so on the 24th we can just do fun birthday things. It is incomprehensible that he missed that appointment yesterday, my birthday today, and will also miss Christmas tomorrow.
I’m at a complete loss to describe the shock of experiencing my first birthday without Michael so immediately after losing him.
On reflection, I realize each member of our family got to have exactly one birthday with Michael post-diagnosis. Mine was on day one. Benjamin’s came in June while still recovering from donating his stem cells to his dad. Michael’s final birthday was in early September on a rare day when he was actually at home and not in the hospital. Our older son’s birthday was just a few weeks ago while Michael was in the ICU. Now we start the cycle all over again, but with an awful twist. This time the boys and I will all get a year older while Michael will forever remain the same age.
The seventh day following Michael’s death was excruciating. It was the last day I could ever in my life say, “I lost my husband this week.” When I turn the page on the calendar another seven days from now, I’ll be forced into a new pair of milestones. It won’t just be, “I lost my husband last month,” it will also be, “I lost my husband last year.” Just typing that sentence caused a squeezing in my chest.
While many others will celebrate with joy as they bid good riddance to the end of 2025, I desperately want to grab onto it for a bit longer. I long to remain in this recent place where even if Michael was in the hospital, I could go put my hand in his for a few hours every single day. Now I wear his wedding band on my thumb, feeling its unusual presence there as a poor substitute for the beloved husband who used to wear it on his left ring finger.
Kind birthday messages have poured in all day, each one commenting on how strange and uncomfortable it is to wish me a happy birthday when I am likely anything but happy. This is a fair observation, but the part which genuinely makes me happy is that despite knowing the grief and pain I’m likely experiencing, they still took the time to message. Often when you don’t know exactly what to say, the easiest option is to say nothing at all.
You know what I’m about to say in this newsletter about being courageous: please don’t take the easy option here.
I’m far from the only one who lost someone this year, I just may be the most recent. If you think back over the year, you could probably name someone else who will be flipping the calendar next week to 2026, leaving their final moments with a loved one here in 2025.
I’ll use my birthday wish on their behalf and suggest a great gift for that person... Go ahead and finish reading this post and then immediately send them an email, a text, or pick up the phone and call them. Tell them you’re thinking about them this week as the year draws to a close, that what they’ve gone through is not forgotten. It doesn’t need to be elaborate at all, I promise there is no correct combination of words which will make everything exactly right again. Experience tells me it’s often the smallest of gestures that someone needs to keep going.
Are you the person who lost someone? Go easy with yourself this week. You’re not alone, I’m sitting right there with you in this grief.
More soon.
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