Recently it occurred to me that several of my friends have April birthdays. I don’t know if this curiosity is in any way significant, but I’ve spent some time pondering it in the last few days. April is a transformational month here in New England, so perhaps it’s noteworthy that most (though not all) of these friends were born here. It seems like a pretty good time of year to have a baby, since the chilly temperatures and starkly barren earth will soon give way to warmth and flowers. Birthdays, after all, celebrate life. And a friend’s birthday celebrates a particular life, one that has shaped and marked ours in important ways. If life is a tapestry, then our friends are surely its brightest threads.
In the last few years, two of my friends with April birthdays have died, both victims of traffic accidents. One of them was my lifelong college best friend. Her passing has left a ragged tear in my life that cannot be mended. The happiness I felt when her birthday rolled around each April – a day which I celebrated with her for over forty years – though too often from afar – is now sorrow-stained. Yet I still celebrate it, for her death has not diminished the impact of her life on mine.
I suspect that the commemoration of a birthday is a celebration not primarily of our own life but of our connection to the lives of others. Our celebration is actually less about our own individuality than about the “ties that bind.” We celebrate not the thread, but the tapestry.
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