Happy Heavenly Birthday, Baby Girl!
That damnable month is here! October. Every year that passes I think to myself on some childlike level that maybe this time I can stop it. Maybe this year I can thwart October’s attempt to arrive. This year someone who rules the world somewhere will announce that due to extreme and unbearable sadness, October has been cancelled. But given that I have not yet managed to do that, I find I am faced instead with thinking each year, of ways to deal with it.
I recently ran across something that helped me to cope with the overwhelming sense of loss and “The Great Sadness” that inevitably comes to rest on my shoulders each October. It was the notion that perhaps when someone leaves this earth and passes on to their Heavenly home, they get to have what they call a Heavenly Birthday on each anniversary of that passing. A celebration maybe, a huge blow-out with all the best that Heaven can arrange. Suddenly, I’m liking that a little as I start to imagine what kind of party Ashley would be having. My mother would be there and my Dad and her Dad now too. My little brother even, whom I never got to meet. She and Audrey Hepburn would go shopping beforehand to pick out fabulous outfits because at the party Patrick Swayze will be dancing with Ashley now instead of Jennifer Grey. The menu will be hers for the choosing and there will be a little bit of everything she loves because calories don’t exist. The swag bags given out to all in attendance will be filled with Mac make up, Kate Spade purses and shoes, Skittles, Ugg boots and DVD’s of every season of Sex in the City and Little House on the Prairie. When it comes time for karaoke she will make the angels envious with her amazing and glorious voice as she sings a remarkable Cher-like rendition of “I’ve Got You Babe” to offically welcome Steve Jobs and help put him at ease.
Dosen’t that sound like a fantastic birthday party if ever she could have dreamed one up? It makes me smile just to picture it. It is important to me to think of the afterlife in terms and ways such as this. No one I know of can ever tell me I’m wrong about it either. It’s what gets me spiritually through the day or “the Month”. Because right now, for us still here on earth missing you Ashley, it still doesn’t make any sense..our losing you. Prehaps you are able to see it all now and know and understand what we find so senseless and needless and painful in our lives. I hope your birthday buddy Steve Jobs was right when he said,
“It is impossible to connect the dots of our lives looking forward, only looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something…guts, destiny, life, karma, whatever… because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.”
May the belief that all our dots will be connected someday..each of us and with yours again in majesty and glory and for eternity sustain us and keep us. Happy 6th Heavenly Birthday Ashley. We love you up to the sky!
