He Would Have Been 40

Today, our son would have turned 40.

I have typed that sentence a few times, and I still do not know exactly what to do with it.

Forty feels like such a grown-up age, even though I know he would have rolled his eyes at me for saying that. It is one of those milestone birthdays that makes you pause and look around, not just at the year in front of you, but at the whole life that has unfolded behind you, and what might be in store in the years ahead. Except for us, part of that life stopped at 31.

PJ turned 31 in hospice, and that is another sentence I still do not know how to hold. A birthday in a hospice room is a strange and sacred thing. It is celebration and sorrow sitting side by side, neither one giving the other room to breathe. It is wanting to honor the life in front of you while knowing that life is slipping from your grasp. It is cake and tears. Family gathered close. Quiet conversations. The hum of machines and soft footsteps in the hallway. The awareness that every ordinary moment has become holy because there may not be many moments left.

And there weren’t.

Nine days after his birthday, PJ died. So now every May 16 asks us to do the strange math of grief. He would have been 40, but he is forever 31. His little boy is no longer little. His friends have careers, families, wrinkles, gray hairs, homes, teenagers, stories, and lives that keep unfolding. The world kept moving, because that is what the world does, even when yours has come apart.

That is one of the harder parts of grief after the early years. At first, people understand that everything has changed. They expect the sadness. They remember the dates with you. They say his name gently. But as time passes, the grief becomes quieter from the outside, even when it is still very much alive on the inside. The dates still come. The body still remembers. The heart still braces itself, even when life has continued to fill the calendar with work and errands and church and family and ordinary Tuesday afternoon responsibilities.

Birthdays after death do something particular to a mother’s heart. They don’t only remind you of the person who died. They remind you of the person who was born. They take you all the way back to the beginning, before the illness, before the hospice room, before the funeral, before the words “aggressive cancer” rearranged our family forever. They take you back to the day he arrived, to the weight of him lying on your chest, the feel of him in your arms, to first cries and first smiles, first steps and first words, first days of school, first heartbreaks, first dreams, and all the ways a child becomes himself right in front of you while you are too tired and busy and human to realize how quickly it is happening.

A birthday says, “Remember, he lived.”

And I want to remember that.

I don’t want PJ’s story to begin at diagnosis or end at hospice. I do not want the pain of losing him to swallow the gift of having him. He was here. He laughed. He loved. He annoyed us, made us proud, made us crazy, and made us better. He was a son, a husband, a dad, a friend, a cousin, a grandson, and a child of God. His life mattered before it was threatened. His life mattered when it was fragile. His life matters still.

That is the holy defiance of remembering. It refuses to let death have the final word over a life God created and loved. It says that even though death has taken something terrible from us, it has not taken everything. It has not erased the laughter, the stories, the photos, the memories, the impact, the love, or the fingerprints of his life that remain pressed into ours.

At the same time, remembering is not simple. I can celebrate that he lived and still ache over all he did not get to experience here. I can believe he is with Jesus and still grieve that he did not get to turn 40 with us. Those two truths don’t cancel each other out. They sit together in the same room, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not, but both are true.

It is not that I believe PJ is missing out. I don’t. I believe he is whole in the presence of God. I believe he is free from pain, suffering, fear, and every limitation cancer forced upon his body. I believe the life he has now is more real and more beautiful than anything I can imagine from here. I believe all of that deeply, and still, we miss him.

We miss what it would have been like to know him at 40.

We wonder what he would have enjoyed. What he would have thought was funny. What hobbies he might have picked up. What shows he would have watched. What books or music or ridiculous internet videos he would have sent us. We wonder what kind of dad he would be to a son growing older. We wonder what his marriage would have looked like after more years of ordinary life. We wonder what conversations we would be having now, what advice he would ignore, what stories he would tell, what restaurants he would love, and what opinions he would absolutely insist were correct.

Grief is full of wonderings, and not all of them are despair. Some of them are love still reaching for connection. Some of them are the heart’s way of continuing to make room for a person who is no longer physically present but is still deeply woven into every part of the family. The wondering can hurt, but it can also be a way of honoring. It is one more way love keeps speaking.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” I will be honest. Some days, grief doesn’t feel light or momentary. It feels heavy and long. But I don’t think Paul is dismissing the pain of this life. I think he is placing it beside eternity.

And eternity changes the scale.

It doesn’t make today painless, but it reminds me that today is not all there is. The same God who held PJ at his birth held him at his death. The same God who knew every day written for him, before one of them came to be, was not surprised when his earthly life was shorter than we wanted it to be. I don’t always know how to make peace with that. Some days, I’m not sure I do. But I’m learning that faith can hold both trust and tears.

Isaiah 461;4 says, “I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” (my paraphrase) That verse comforts me because it reminds me that God isn’t only present at the beginning and the end. He carries the whole life. Every breath. Every ordinary day. Every birthday. Every diagnosis. Every hospice room. Every moment we saw and every moment we missed.

God made PJ. God carried PJ. God carries us still.

So tonight, after a day of remembering in our own ways, we have marked his birthday. Not because it is easy, but because love keeps remembering. Love keeps setting a place in the heart. Love keeps saying his name. Love keeps noticing the empty chair without pretending the table is not still full of gifts. We will celebrate the life that was here. We grieve the years we did not get. We wonder what 40 would have looked like. We thank God for the 31 years we had. There may have been tears. There may have been laughter. There may have been both within the same breath.

He would have been 40. He is forever 31. He is with Jesus. We are still here.

And somehow, in the strange mercy of God, all of that is true at the same time.

Because birthdays after death are still birthdays. They still tell the truth that someone beloved was born.

And oh, how beloved he was.