My birthday is inching closer and I am not ready for it. It honestly feels like another day to me. I don't really see anything special about it. Besides dealing with my health and after procedure care and pain I'm just not into it this year.
I don't really celebrate it anymore and my parents rarely tell me happy birthday but my mom does post it on Facebook but doesn't really direct it to me so I don't really see it.
They also don't really get me a gift but it's the same for there grandkids and they rarely check on me but want me to call them and go see them but they don't call nor come see me even though they were 5 minutes from my home but I end up having to go 45 minutes to see them.
They also do not really have their grandkids spend the night or spend a day with them.
I don't have that bond that others have with their parents really. My parents don't watch their grandkids. They don't even do anything special with them either. There isn’t that close bond that a lot of people talk about having with their parents.
What am I even saying? They never really took me on trips either. Growing up in school people would always talk about trips and how they would go to the Bahamas or the beach or the mountains or a cruise and the only place I went to was my cousins or field trips at school like zoo trip and a few other places. I never been the the beach with my family. They would always go every November for their anniversary but I would end up sitting with family such as aunts, uncles and cousins. I don't really have a lot of memories with my family so I try to make some now with my kiddos and my husband. I try to relive and heal my childhood with them and take them places my parents would never take me.
When I look around and see how involved other people are in their grandkids’ lives—or even in their adult children’s lives—it really hits me. I see the love, the effort, the connection, and I can’t help but think, “I wish I had that kind of bond.” But I don’t. And that’s something I’m still learning how to accept.
This is a different kind of grieving.
I’m grieving what could’ve been,
what I hoped for,
what I thought life would look like.
And even though it isn’t a death,
it still feels like a loss.
