A little happy with your sad (A memory)

It's no secret among my family that awkward laughter can almost always be heard through the tears. Sometimes it is just easier to laugh than it is to cry, even though it doesn't make sense on the surface or look just right.

Four years ago, my uncle got stomach cancer and fought for his life. He didn't win that fight, and in April, we headed to the cities to attend his funeral and be as supportive as we could for his family. It was such a hard trip. There's nothing fun about seeing family suffer, mourning someone that you loved, wondering how or where to go from here. 

Amid all of the sadness was one little ray of happiness. It was my sister's birthday. Not just any birthday, though. It was her eighteenth birthday. She was so aware of everything that day, that it wasn't really appropriate to be parading her excitement around, that people couldn't be expected to remember or give her more than a quick "Happy birthday." It was hard on her, and I could tell. She's the kind of girl that loves to celebrate, not just her birthdays, but everyone's. She loves to make others feel extra important and flat out loved. It truly seemed unfair that her big milestone birthday was not to be celebrated.

I grabbed my cousin, the one that my sister adored the most and that loved her back like her very own sister. I told her what was happening and we agreed that we needed to secretly do something fantastic for her. We snuck away to a local Dairy Queen and found the best cake we could. We even had them write on it with icing. This is no small thing, since her name is LARA, frequently confused for LAURA. They even got that right! It was definitely as perfect as we could have hoped for.

After we got this cake, we realized that we had no good way of getting her to see it without awkwardly parading in front of our family after the funeral. We put on our thinking caps and decided that she needed to come to us. As we parked around the block, by the little park just down the street, I got out my phone and gave her a call, "Lara, come down the street to the park. No, just do it. Hurry up! Just do it. Seriously. Just do it." She was hesitant and confused, and I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw us standing there with a big pretty cake just for her birthday. We laughed so hard that we almost cried (typical, no?) and snuck back into the house to enjoy a piece before it all melted.

The cake ended up abandoned in the freezer of my aunt's house and I'm sure she wondered where in the world it came from, but the memory of this was worth all of the trouble. 

Just this past weekend, my mom and I were walking past this same park and I knew I needed to write this little story down so I'd never forget it. Because, you see, my sister is great at birthdays. And she deserves to have great birthdays. It's a happy story, even with all of the sad.



You can follow all posts by choosing one of the following options: