Easter & Death

Sunday was Easter, the day Jesus rose from the dead.

My question is: If Jesus came back to life after being crucified, when did he really die? Even though I was raised in a Christian tradition, this never occurred to me. Like, he's not walking around today, two thousand years old. If he really did die (and isn't walking around as a two thousand year old), come we don't honor that day? We celebrate his birth and his first death, why not his second death?

This was puzzling me, so I googled it. 

It turns out, he ascended into Heaven forty days after he was resurrected. 

I can't believe I didn't remember this part, but in fairness, it was never marked out as a holiday. It they talked about it at church, it must have been just a regular Sunday and I tuned out. It's not like people get together and celebrate the Ascension.

I don't really think that is fair that he was sent to heaven forty days after he died. I mean, if he bothered to be resurrected, you would think he would spend more time hanging out with the his friends and family instead of taking off so soon. 

Birthday Party Blues

The last time I had a birthday party, my life imploded a week later. Six years ago, I had a catered shindig at the condo with thirty friends. In the middle of the party, I stood on a chair and gave a speech, telling everyone there why I was grateful they were a part of my life. I was awash with warm feelings.

Within the week following the party, I sent in the paperwork to send my son off to treatment for anxiety and depression and my husband bullied me to move out of the house. 

"If you are going to leave when Pedro goes to treatment, leave now. Get out." 

And so I went.

So now I am planning another party for my birthday. I have knots in my stomach thinking back to the last one. Jack had volunteered to send out the invitations and plan it, but in the end he didn't. I called the caterers myself.

Here I am now, planning the party myself again, really not much different than before, except this time I know. Before, I thought I had a partner but he was just a ghost, there but not there.

So, should I still have a party? I've already invited people, so I guess it is on. 

Just because my life imploded the week after my last party doesn't mean it is going to implode again. If anything, that party was a boost, a lift, that helped me navigate the weeks that followed.

How hard might my life have been if I hadn't had the party? Would I have finished the paperwork to send my son to treatment, the paperwork my ex had said he would do but then didn't? Would I have had the strength to leave when he told me to get out?

The party wasn't the trigger for all of the chaos and uncertainty and sadness that followed. Instead, it may have been the balm I needed go get through a really, really hard time. I didn't know at the time what the next two years would bring, the hardest and must trying time of my life. Maybe those warm fuzzy feelings from that event helped carry me through.

Now I have new friends, new people in my life, most of whom I didn't know six years ago. What will happen in the next week, the next month, the next six years? I don't know, but again it is time to move forward, with whatever the future holds.