Chris turned fifty three on Monday. I tried desperately to not pay attention or say anything about it, but spent the day continually checking his Facebook memorial page to see if any one had left messages. Then I swallowed my ball of hypocrisies and posted nothing, leaving it with plain old lurking. Today marks eleven years since his passing and it has always felt like an extra layer of cruelty that we celebrated his birthday and said our final goodbyes all in the span of one breath.

Tiffany asked me on Monday what age Chris is to me, like is he the same age as when he died, younger, older? In general, Chris is at various ages in my head. I am surrounded with pictures of him during our life together, along with pictures of a much younger Chris before me. Those images make an impression. Mostly though, Chris ages with each birthday. I imagine him now with a bit more gray in his hair, particularly around the temples. Chris, even though he had Lasik years ago, needs readers now and it has become a big joke about how often he loses them on top of his head. He’s a little thinner because he took up running. He likes to run up to the coffee shop at seventy fifth and Wornall and he spends half his day there typing away on his laptop. There’s a comic book nerd guy that hangs out at the same coffee shop with his computer and he and Chris have become comic book pals. Chris has settled in here, found a group of his kind of people. He’s taken to smoking a pipe, not really because he likes the tobacco, but because it is ridiculous. Sometimes he replaces the tobacco with soapy water. You can imagine.

Chris is still Chris.

This, these anniversaries, it is not any harder today than it was last year or the year before that. That doesn’t mean it is easy. Like a habit, missing him has just become a way of life. It is just like the parts of my body that now ache when the weather turns suddenly from tolerable to freezing. It is a dull pain like all the other pains that come with an aging body, that I just live with. This is how I am now. Like the other day at work when I was hot. I am always cold at work, but the other day I wasn’t and I said out loud that I was hot and I didn’t know if it was because the room was being heated or if this is just how I am now. There is gratitude in accepting the things that I cannot control or change. Because while I cannot change the fact that Chris is gone, I can still imagine a life where he is still with us.

Imagination: the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.

The number of times I have heard someone say to me “I just can’t imagine…” My reaction was always “why would you even try to imagine?” Now I wonder if imagining a life without Chris would have actually prepared me for the inevitable. I have become more creative and possibly more resourceful, but not delusional. I don’t go home at the end of the day and expect to see him sitting on the couch, Empire Strikes Back playing on the TV while he pokes around on his computer. I no longer keep a chat window open for our daily random chats. Because while I can imagine all of these things, I know it is all just a practice in creativity and Chris was all about practices in creativity.

I am no longer mad at Chris. Releasing the anger has allowed me to see the gifts that he left me with.