Anniversaries in a year of mourning

On Friday it will be my sister's birthday. My elder sister, that is, who died last October of cancer. In this first terrible year since she left us, every "first" has been hard. This forthcoming one, perhaps the hardest of all. Birthdays of loved ones who have died are always days of remembrance. In this case it is particularly poignant, because my sister loved, loved, loved celebrating her birthday. It was a  major enterprise for her. She would plan for weeks beforehand. She would write her birthday list on yellow Post Its and put them on the wall up all the way up the stairs of her house for her husband and kids to find. She died not long after her fiftieth birthday, a milestone she had been longing to throw a huge party for. She had the huge party - her husband and family saw to that - but she was in no state to enjoy it. Dressed up, and drugged up to the ears to counteract the appalling pain of the tumours that had spread to her spine, barely able to communicate while her friends milled sympathetically around her holding their glasses of wine in one hand, and some of them clutching tissues in the other, the party remains one of the more painful of the memories I have of that terrible year. What to do, then, on Friday? If there is one thing I have learned, and I have learned it the hard way, it is that days that induce painful memories are best spent doing something completely different from the traditions of previous years. After someone you love leaves you, the moments associated with them can't be recreated in the same way, because that person was a central defining factor. None more so than their birthday. I have mulled over this for many a night in the last month, and I am still not sure what the answer is, but I do know that I have hit on the right question. And that is, how do I want to spend that day? How to redefine it, not recreate it? I think a lot has to do with how I will feel when I wake up on Friday morning. But what I have done, is given myself several options. Of course there are options I have discarded, that include, spend the whole day weeping in bed; drink heavily on Thursday night and call in sick on Friday so I can wallow; sit in my kitchen looking obsessively at pictures of her. I don't want to do any of these things. It is approaching a year since she died and getting close to the time when I should reasonably think about moving on from the raw pain of loss. So I don't want to court it by opening wounds, like rubbing away at a scab so it doesn't heal. Here are the options I have thought through: 1. Take one of my favourite books, drive to the cemetery where she is buried, and sit on the bench that is nearly opposite her grave, and read and reflect. Perhaps also listen to some music. 2. Take a very long walk somewhere leafy with lots of sky above my head. Make the walk long enough to feel real fatigue at the end of it. End up at a cafe somewhere, preferably one that is popular with families. I find the sight of young children unfailingly uplifting, even the badly behaved ones. They induce hope to my grief. 3. Go to work. Treat it like just another day. In the evening, over my ritual family Friday night meal, open a bottle of wine and toast her memory. Or light a memorial candle alongside Sabbath candles. No, you are not supposed to do it on a birthday but who cares? And 4. Search out my younger sister. Give her a huge hug. Good options, I think. And not mutually exclusive either. There is more than a passing chance I will end up doing a version of all four.