![\"Robin](\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/BirthdaysPost-710x1024.jpg\" "\\"Birthdays")
\u201cMom. I want chocolate cake. For breakfast,\u201d my daughter, who died five years ago, announced as I awoke on the anniversary of her death. A large leftover piece of the cake I\u2019d brought to friends the night before, to acknowledge the March deaths of our loved ones, sat in the fridge.<\/p>\n
My daughter\u2019s will, always stronger than my resolve, lives on within me. Birthdays and death dates are times I\u2019m most likely to give in to her way. \u201cChocolate cake, mom. With ice cream. And whipped cream. For breakfast. By candlelight,\u201d the details grew more specific the closer we got to the kitchen. That\u2019s how the day began.<\/p>\n
For weeks leading up to her angelversary, I\u2019d whined and cranked in dread of that day. \u201cListen to your daughter. What would she want?\u201d People had posted back long lists. \u201cSing, play her music, light candles, eat her favorite foods, share stories about her with those who loved her, release balloons or butterflies, give gifts to others, make a donation in her honor, do random acts of kindness, …look at her old photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n So I did. And I had a picnic by the lake, and attended an exercise class at our gym. In the evening, I took her best friend out for sushi dinner since my daughter had loved sushi. The friend brought along another friend I hadn\u2019t seen in a while, and this other friend had her newborn baby with her. The baby\u2019s eyes were so like my daughter\u2019s at that age. He seemed to be searching my face. I almost cried. But instead, when the friends went to collect their buffet dinners, leaving me alone in the booth holding the baby, I sang my daughter\u2019s song to him, and drifted back into old times cuddling in sweet warmth.<\/p>\n The time leading up to birthdays and deathdays is often harder than the days themselves. The terrifying thing is that each anniversary takes you farther away from the times you were with your beloved. Another year gone by. Then another. And one day, the number of years without will outnumber the years with them. And the thought of them being forgotten is unbearable. It brings up the inevitability of one\u2019s own death, the brevity of our time on this earth. The need to make each day, not just the special dates<\/a>, count.<\/p>\n \u201cSo what was the best part of the day?\u201d I asked my dead daughter later, as I walked her dog and watched the night sky. <\/p>\n What small magnificent thing will you do today?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Mom. I want chocolate cake. For breakfast,” my daughter, who died five years ago, announced as I awoke on the anniversary of her death. A large leftover piece of the cake I’d brought to friends the night before, to acknowledge the March deaths of our loved ones, sat in the fridge. My daughter’s will, always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[702],"tags":[768,769,771,772,610,770],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-702","tag-angelversary","tag-anniversary-of-loved-ones-death","tag-birthdays-and-death-dates","tag-celebrating-anniversary-death","tag-grief-healing","tag-how-to-celebrate-a-deceased-birthday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cHow would you commemorate your child\u2019s angelversary<\/a>? What do you do on the deathday of the one you love?\u201d I\u2019d put out desperate pleas on Facebook pages.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMom, you\u2019ve got your bathing suit on under your workout clothes so let\u2019s go swimming,\u201d she said in the gym. We swam. Then we went shopping and bought a red sweatshirt, and I wore it hiking with my inherited dog. I did almost everything from the lists of things to do.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHolding the newborn,\u201d she told me. And back in the house, I couldn\u2019t go to bed until I found the snapshot I\u2019d taken of her shortly after she was born.<\/p>\n