I have been pondering a lot on traditions lately. Last week I was thumbing through Cam's scriptures and I found a couple of quotes scrawled in the inside cover. Not sure where he got them but they were:
"We had the sweetest childhood. We had everything money cannot buy!"
and
"Traditions in the family help us to give our family all that is needed."
Traditions were very important to us both as children, and then as parents. It is harder now for me to go through with some of our traditions, but we have a new one that we have started each February 5th.
It is a party in honor of Cam's birthday. He would have been 39.
The last birthday we celebrated together was in a frigid and stark hospital room in the Tom Baker Cancer Center. I ordered in dinner from Chili's, one of our favorite restaurants. (We didn't tell the nurses or the dietician). He was ecstatic to devour one of his favorite dishes. If you knew him well you knew that food was one of his primary passions. After finishing, he promptly barfed it up. We wanted to cry so instead we laughed hysterically and made a toast with some Boost meal replacement. Even though that birthday was hardly ideal, what I wouldn't give to share another one like it.
Days like today are both brutal and sweet. I love the flood of memories that come with special occasions because they make him feel more near. That flood of memories also brings another kind of flood. One that usually involves a lot of kleenex and running mascara.
We meet out at the cemetery with all of my family and Cam's family. With all the nieces, nephews, cousins, and siblings, there are quite a few of us. After singing happy birthday we simultaneously launch helium balloons into the sky. One for each year. It is really quite breathtaking and the kids love it. Then we get together and have one of his favorite meals. Other years we've played massive games of dodgeball and floor hockey, another set of Cam's passions. In light of it being the Sabbath, we toned it down and had the party at the Tanner Center. We might as well have been in the gym with all the screaming and running around that the kids were doing. Love it.
I am so lucky to have the family I do. They help bring joy to difficult days. Happy Birthday Cam!
5 comments:
This is beautiful and heart wrenching at the same time. I look up to you a lot, Coralee, you have such a beautiful strength about you that is something to admire.
Anyway, cry through a whole box or two of kleenex...you are definitely entitled to that.
What a great family tradition, I love it! I'm so glad you do it and I have no doubt that Cam is there in a spiritual sense right next to you the entire time.
And Happy Birthday to your Cam!
Crying to hard to type love you! Love Cam, love your family!
What a wonderful tradition! You are such an amazing person-so strong and inspiring. I honestly don't know how you do it...one day at a time obviously. Whenever life gets you down or you have a bad day, while using up that box of kleenex, know that everyone who knows you loves you and thinks you are amazing!!
Awesome tradition and it made me cry you really are amazing I love your thoughts and quotes and all you write because it makes me cherish what I have even more and what trials I have been given.
the Sounds like a perfect tradition Cam is lucky to have you and the kids.... what a reunion that will be even though we'd all far rather he was here...but Happy Birthday to Cam..traditions are what bonds us all together and that is a perfect one!!
We were spying on you out our window. We watched the balloons float away. It was an awesome sight. What a great (and difficult) tradition. You did luck out on good weather!
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