41st birthday

Today would have been Ryan’s 41st birthday.  I would be a lot more emotional but we have a busy day of writing class, appointments, schoolwork, field trip with friends, and then a clarinet concert tonight.  But I want to continue our tradition from last year of celebrating a “Daddy Day,” so I think we are setting aside Friday to celebrate Ryan, visit the cemetery, and then do his favorite things and eat his favorite treats.  Charlie especially needs to see this happen and I think Kate does too, but without showing it as much.  And I think keeping track of Ryan’s birthdays is also helpful to me because it just occurred to me that on my birthday this year, in October, I will turn 39 and that was the age Ryan was when he died.  And then about six weeks after my birthday (40 days after it to be exact), I will then be older than Ryan ever was.  It is weird to think that as I age, Ryan will always kind of stay about in his late 30’s to me because I can’t picture him older than that.  But then if you go back and listen to the podcast I shared in the blog entry just before this one, I picture the idea of all of us all being in our early 30’s for eternity - that being the age when our bodies kind of “peak” from growth of infant to our “best” adult self  (physically, not necessarily mentally or spiritually or emotionally but we get take most of the mental, spirit, and emotions with us into eternity, so those have the opportunity to continue to “grow” from now forward, unlike our physical bodies).  After 30ish, our bodies begin to deteriorate back down.  I love the idea that our eternal selves would be the “peak” of what we have on earth because eternal life does not have deterioration.  I could write much much more on those thoughts but for now, and probably will at some point, but for now here is a picture of my beloved Ryan in 2013, when he would have been about 35 years old.

This is how I choose to remember Ryan because this was taken
at a time when he was happy and “well,” before depression really
took over and perhaps what he will be/is for all eternity.  :)