Happy Birthday Traditions

Today before I even open my eyes I know what day it is. My first born's birthday. What a day of celebration. One that use to, even when he became an adult, started with a birthday scavenger hunt. We would wake him up and with long bedhead hair, video as he stumbled half asleep through the clues and hints until he finally found his birthday present. When I even suggested, at his 21st birthday, that we might not have this scavenger hunt he balked with all his might. Traditions. That is what knits a family tightly together. Traditions. Songs that stick in our head from days when we rocked our children to sleep, You Are My Sunshine, to nightly rituals of texting, Night, love you. These traditions bring comfort that life is right and no matter what else happens in the world our family is united and tied to each other. Comfort. Knowing that no matter how the world treats you and turns upside down you can always come home to family and life will be the same. My kids thrive on tradition. But when a child, your child, their brother, dies traditions change. The world is no longer spinning like it once did. For people trenched in tradition, uncertainty abounds around every corner. How does life go on? How do you have holidays? Birthdays? Family dinners? Even something as simple as going to a restaurant and saying "seating for 4 not 5." I balked at changing tradition so I ran. First Christmas, I made the entire family, not just the four of us but all of Bart's family go on a cruise. Why? I could not fathom the idea of waking up Christmas morning and their only being 2 Santa Claus piles. So I ran and took others with me. I never fixed certain meals because they were too painful to make. I changed the seating, the numbers, added more, the pictures. But finally you have to stop. The third Christmas my middle child said, no more. I want to have Christmas at home. I want to create new traditions. So we did. And somehow this tradition true family let go. We have Christmas and the other holidays at home. Home, where once again we are steeped in new traditions. The bedrooms are changed, new pictures are made. New memories are formed and the old start to fade away. But on this morning, my son's 27th birthday, some traditions are just too hard to forget. I lay in bed and dream of happier days when I would wake that tousled head young man who was taller than me and play out the tradition of birthday scavenger hunt. As the tears trickle down, I pray that somehow God let him have his tradition. That he hugged him tight and told him his momma loves and misses him so much and that no matter how much life changes I will cling to my memories of traditions.