23 January 2004
Marybeth O'Mara
January 23, 2004
Carrie's Nineteenth Birthday. The twentieth January that she has been a part of our lives. Her life was a gift from the get-go; she was born just two months after my dad died and I always knew that she represented a healing, a new promise to ease the pain from the loss of Dad. I think she, along with Luke, provided a distraction for my Mom as she coped with widowhood, and then lung cancer, and for Jeff's parents, too, as they finally were able to begin to move away from the pain of Jon's death and embrace these exuberant and wonderful grandchildren who demanded so much from life.
I think about all the birthdays—too few as it turns out—that we celebrated with her. Last year we commandeered the back room of Prairie Joe's for a party with her friends in early February. She seemed so healthy; little did we know that those renegade cells had begun regrouping for a full-out assault on her body, to be discovered less than a month later. Two years ago, she "celebrated" her 17th birthday in the hospital, receiving IV nutrition because mouth sores had her vacuuming blood from her mouth and doped up on narcotics. Still, she greeted family and friends for pizza in the 4-west conference room, and wore a cute little birthday hat on her bald head and smiled that radiant, if blood-tinged, smile for all comers. After she felt better, Carrie hosted an ice-skating party in February. She had a diner party at Nifty Fifties in kindergarten, a sleepover party in second grade, playing Pictionary late into the night. We took several kids to a magic show in first grade, where Carrie and her Dad were invited on stage to assist the magician. She was mad because Jeff, Nora and I went to Puerto Rico for a business conference when she turned eleven, but Jeff made it up to Carrie by taking her to Fort Lauderdale on a business trip when she turned twelve, where she spent much of the day traipsing around with a hotel maid while her dad was in meetings—and loving it! We took several friends to a hotel for swimming, videos and a sleepover for her ninth birthday, a party Nora reprised this past fall. Her birthday was always something to celebrate.
This year, the celebration is more muted. We will give a gift to a one-year-old friend who shares Carrie's birth date, visit the cemetery (and right the Christmas tree the animals keep knocking over), and once again eat at Prairie Joe's in her honor. If not too tired later, maybe we will begin an art project or watch an Audrey Hepburn film together. Grief and gratitude continue to mingle together, neither diminishing the other. We are grateful for the gift that was Carrie and for your thoughts and prayers today, and we grieve that we cannot hold her, laugh with her, or feel quite complete without her today.
Happy birthday, Carrie.
Marybeth