The Celebration

Y’all get ready; this will be a post with which you disagree.

Thank you to those who wished me a happy birthday. And to those who didn’t, God bless you.

One of my favorite poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote, “And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.”

Why would I want to celebrate that? Old age, wrinkles, a sore back, and the inability to get up off the couch at breakneck speed. Yay.

Honestly, I’ve struggled with birthdays.

One reason is I used to hate birthday parties. I never thought they were anything to be excited about. But people expected me to be excited about them, so I smiled. Then they gathered around me, and the oxygen left the room as they sang that ‘old sweet song.’ What I wanted was to learn how to disappear off the face of the earth. There’s nothing that will make time pass by any slower.

Secondly, I don’t want to celebrate a long-lost day that no one remembers. If anyone does, it was the one screaming at God and everybody else while she pushed a human being out of her body. (Let’s celebrate our mothers on our birthdays! They’re the heroes in our story.)

The only reason I had birthdays past thirteen is that my grandmother would make it seem we were reliving The Depression if we didn’t.

Now, I do enjoy recognizing other people's birthdays. I like to make my wife and children feel special on their birthdays. But that’s because it’s them, not me.

But this year, something changed for me. As I sat there and watched my wife and boys sing to me, I decided I would celebrate my birthday and enjoy it because having birthdays means I’m alive, and I have them in my life.

Watching Son #1 and Son #2 as they smiled and sang their little hearts out for me made me want to live and live life to its fullest.

Then I watched as they ate my wife’s homemade chocolate cake and icing. They smiled at me with chocolate smeared all over their little faces.

So I celebrate life. I celebrate the opportunity to be alive. And I celebrate the memories made each day. To love and be loved by a precious woman and three treasured children.

And one day, when I die, they better not put on a sad funeral. Cry only for yourselves. I don’t want them to grieve my death. I want them to celebrate my life.

And I want them to celebrate the fact that, at that moment, I am more alive than I have ever been.

One of my favorite authors, Andy Andrews (who shares a Birthday with me), wrote, “Life itself is a privilege, but to live life to its fullest, well, that is a choice.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ended his poem with this:

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing

Learn to labor and to wait.

I celebrate life. And I want to live life to its fullest.

“Life is short. I want to live it well.”

to those who are abundantly alive,

- Caleb