It’s strange as from a young age all children wait for day of their birthday. Sure we celebrate milestone birthdays like 16th, 18th and 21st, even when older like 40th, 50th and 80th then if you live that long 100 years old. Anyway it gets to the stage in your life where your birthday is just another day and the time between one birthday to the next gets shorter and shorter.
Some people get to the stage where celebrating is just too hard, torments of past birthdays maybe or the fact of getting older itself. Guess everyone has one of those birthdays where you feel it’s destroyed by something bad happening, usually and totally out of anyone’s control. Thinking back over the years of my birthdays of course I see some good ones. My home life was not always great growing up but still looked forward to that day where I could be the centre of the household, celebration of my day of birth. The first greatest birthday marked by youth of today and even when I was growing up is sweet 16, when your young it’s a special day.
As much as others in my family and my friends see this event as special, something inside just can not get physically and mentally excited about it, It’s a feeling I have felt for a long time, many years in fact. Until this year think my worst birthday was my 16th Birthday, 28th of August, 1979 if I remember right was a Wednesday. Of course can not throw a birthday party in the middle of a school week so we intended throwing, maybe not so much a party but instead, more of a get together on Saturday the 1st of September. It was mid to late afternoon, getting things ready when there was a knock at the front door. It was the police coming to tell us my father had died while on fishing trip. Why he was not home is a long story but he’d been away for almost 2 weeks, after one of the worst household arguments ever. He was up at the river fishing and had walked down a path, others using that area too just saw him drop from a heart attack. So that was an abrupt end to any kind of celebration.
Think what changed my perceptions of birthdays was sometime before I turned 17 and I had to get a extraction of my birth certificate for driver’s licence purposes. Up until that time my birth date was the 28th of August, 1963. If anyone has read my past blog entries will know how my pre-16 life was and th
e details of my birth. Anyway once I got the extract certificate, think it totally changed and increased my self loathing, confusion and feelings of worthlessness. The date written on the extract put my birth date on the 27th of August, 1963. Sure jokingly I made fun that I had 2 birthday’s but inside it devastated my perceptions of my life, made me feel like my life to that time was one big joke. Although I until now I still see the 28th as my birthday and if have to celebrate my birthday could never do it on the 27th.
Over the years birthdays have come and gone, even though they may not mean much to me except another year older, family and friends see a significance in the occasion. Over the years have missed some birthdays, mine and other family members birthdays due to circumstance beyond my control. This year I turned 45 years old and although until the 28th this year I thought my worst birthday was my 16th birthday, but this year totally overwhelms me more than any birthday in the past.
It was 3:40 am in the morning, I woke up as my friend Reno who turned 45 on the 24th of August was over my next door neighbours house for birthdays drinks. Reno like Pat, my neighbour, loved their alcohol and as with anyone with this type of illness a few drinks more often turns into too many. Reno was suppose to be staying at my place and when I noticed he wasn’t home went to my neighbours, I thought maybe Reno had fallen asleep, so I went to make sure everything was alright and bring back to my place.
As I went into my neighbours driveway the carport door was open but neither Pat or Reno seemed to be there. As I walked in, it took a few second for my eyes to focus properly in the corner of the carport was my neighbour. He had fallen and hit his head on a steel fence beam. I checked his pulse but when I touched him he was ice cold. Reno must have fallen asleep inside, living with Reno for some years I learn even when drunk if he had been asleep. Anyway Reno came out from the house just as I got off the phone to the ambulance service. With the torment of Police and Investigators being around most of the day, questions on what happened and the circumstance surrounding it, I am not sure how I coped, I couldn’t let myself feel emotion, I just felt like a zombie trying to keep myself together. Wasn’t until later that day the coroner made the determination that he had fallen hitting his head, tried to get up and suffered a heart attack which was very quick thankfully.
What scared me the most is I thought it was Reno at first, something that has worried me, even scared me for sometime when Reno was living with me. Reno and I have been friends since high school, meaning no disrespect to Pat, who was a great friend, part of me is glad that fear hasn’t happened. Now because of that feeling not to mention the mental and physical anguish of finding Pat I think it will take sometime to recover within myself. Even so, every year now, this day will haunt me but as with many ghosts from my past have no choice but to cope as best I can and at least try and move on with life.
One good thing, living in a close group of houses we all developed an overall friendship between us, so when something like this happens of course it affect us all. So the support we are giving each other in this, the hardest of times, the loss of not just one of our neighbours but a great friend will help us all to come to terms with and in time deal this tragedy.