Deathday/Birthday

Last Thursday was my Uncle Jon's 43rd birthrday; as the title of this entry indicates, it marked another important day as well: the second anniversary of my grandmother's passing.

My family got together at my grandma and grandpa's house to celebrate the beginning of our planet's fourty-third circumvolution around the center of the solar system since my Uncle's arrival into this world (yes, that is actually how my family has come to think of it). After having finished tutoring at 9:15pm, I drove over to wish my uncle a happy birthday, and to have some dinner.

Our family likes to eat: dinners tend to be excuses to indulge our appetites; holidays and birthdays are exercises in gastronomic excess. On this particular night, the entree was steak. My uncle bought a meat smoker a while back, and has been merrilly churning out smoked beef and poultry like a Farmer John's subsidiary. His recent embarkation on the Atkins bandwagon has only fueled this carnivorous practice. The side dishes included Chinese chicken salad from Rascals (yummers! they make the best Chinese chicken salad!), and a potato o'gratin dish. The latter was a dairy fiend's dream; it was suffused with enough sour cream and cheese to induce gout in anyone partaking of more than one helping. The birthday cake was a chocolate creation from Hoff's Hut. The cake itself was exceptionally moist, and the rich, thick frosting contained chips made of dark chocolate--the bittersweet kind.

Upon arrival, I noticed an ethereal gloom wafting through the house. It wasn't quite "depression," but something more akin to meloncholy, or even disappointment, the way one might feel after finding his weight has moved five pounds in the wrong direction after a couple weeks on a new diet. Even my uncle, typically the most high-spirited of all my relatives, responded to my "happy birthday" with a cheerless "thank you," and a forced smile.

No one mentioned the cause of this oppressive disconsolation,but of course, no explanation was required. I had just discussed the situation a few days prior with my mother.

My grandfather has tended toward reticence for as long as I've known him, but after my grandmother passed away, he became even more quiet, and rather sullen. Whenever I visit (and from all accounts, whenever I'm not visiting as well) he sits in this big leather recliner and watches TV. I'm not really sure he's always paying attention; sometimes he dozes off, and sometimes one can just tell that his mind is elsewhere. I told my mom that it's been two years, and grandpa should do things, go places, live life.

She responded that my grandmother's death was very hard for him. Then she said that maybe I just never loved anyone as much as he loved my grandma. She implied that I was being insensitive, but I said that it seemed rather wasteful for him to just sit there all day. My grandmother had been a very active woman; she loved traveling and trying new things. I said that he should make the most of his life now, otherwise it were as though he had already died. (After I die, I hope all my friends and family do things, go places, live life.) My mother summarily concluded the conversation by telling me I had better miss her when she goes. I surmised this was her way of insinuating that I had better be in mourning for her at least two years, and that I should to little to nothing during that time to prove the sincerity of my bereavement.

Since I was in Beijing teaching English last November, this was the first anniversary of my grandmother's death that I spent at home. I had expected that this dual deathday/birthday would be marked by some ambivalence, but I suppose I wasn't prepared for how pervasive the disconsolation would be.

It's strange how much dejection a sad event can bring to what would otherwise be a festive moment. I don't think the converse is true: happy events don't really ameliorate the grief of a doleful event; at least in this case, the celebration of my uncle's birthday seemed to have no effect on that day's other commemoration. If anything, I think it made it all the sadder, because everyone knew we should have been merry, but merriness isn't the same when it's forced.

Maybe it's all confusion about how to feel, or how we're supposed to feel. Maybe we want to celebrate, but in the back of our minds it seems disrespectful to show mirth on such a day. Maybe we want to mourn, but in our hearts it seems unfair to let my uncle's special day turn so bitter. So maybe we're just left with this confused ambivalence, the pretext of blowing out candles and cutting the birthday pastry, but the reality of what happened two years ago is still so fresh, even fresher than that bittersweet cake.