Happy Birthday and Memento Mori!

I am 55 years old today. What a great number- the symmetry alone makes it fun to write! As anyone who knows me knows- I love celebrating my birthday. It is a marker of life, and a time to reflect on blessings. I am not sure how I avoided the lamentations about the plague of aging- and maybe not forever- but for now I am deeply grateful for health and a wonderful family around me. I celebrate my birthday for the full month of December- my own personal holiday!

I would like to encourage everyone reading this to not feel sad about getting older. Maybe it is because my looks were never all that great to begin with, but the wrinkles and the softness around the middle seem like nothing to get all worked up about. I wonder if the resistance to aging in our culture is because each passing year gets us that much closer to death. If any of you have seen the recent Tom Hanks movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” — which I loved and strongly recommend- this was beautifully addressed. It is about the life of the beloved Mr. Fred Rogers- and what he said to a dying man was that perhaps people don’t talk enough about death, but if we mentioned it, we could manage it. Everything mentionable is manageable.

So on this, the 55th anniversary of my trip around the sun, I would ask that you mention death as a gift to me, and then know that at least for the moment it is managed. Memento mori, as we Catholics say- because for those of us who believe that this life isn’t the whole story, death isn’t to be feared. And to get to eternity we have to pass through that door. And aging is a way that many of us get there — if we are lucky. Life is beautiful, and we can celebrate it every day. Birthdays are a time to remember that!