Birthday drama

Will Smith just turned 45. He explained to the new Tonight Show host, Jimmy Fallon, how he feels like he is going into the third quarter of his life. There is (apparently) no sport in which you suddenly give up and lie around because 3rd quarter is super important to the outcome. So Will has begun to challenge himself to do things like sky dive.

Unfortunately, instead of taking Mr. Smith's positive influence, I was a bit of a Debi Downer this year (ok, maybe a LOT).  Once again I had that feeling as if every birthday I am traveling further away from ellie. And I suddenly just wanted to stop it. 

Then, as I was contemplating Lotta's outfit for the day and how it would have to be birthday worthy, I was transported back to the moment, in front of that same closet, trying to pick out Ellie's last outfit. How I felt there could not possibly be anything in there that would be worthy of that kind of finality.  Which as you probably suspected made me a weepy hot mess.

As I was explaining all this to Thom, he suggested that perhaps with each birthday I could imagine myself actually driving CLOSER rather than FURTHER from ellie.  Hmmm a bit of reframing. He wasn't sure if it would make me feel better or worse but somehow it made me feel better (or bed-der as Ellie would say.)