Today is my 31st birthday. An age that Kody never was able to achieve, never wanted to achieve. Today is no different from yesterday except that the number has turned, a marker has been met. In reality I am just a single day older than I was yesterday, but it feels different. It is different. Marking time now, whether it moves quickly or slowly feels so strange. My 30th year was not an enviable one. It is not a year I have any problem leaving behind as time flows on.

Having a birthday without waking up to a message from Kody is odd. He didn’t like birthdays himself, but he always marked those of others. As I may have said previously, Kody was exactly one month and two days older than me. He considered this to mean that he had wisdom beyond mine as of course the older and more mature of the two of us. I would tease him about being an old man. He would tease me about being too young to understand. This became something that always surrounded our birthdays.

Moving into my 31st year without the typical ribbing associated with the day is odd. Its a joke I’ve become accustomed to throughout the years and without it, I’m not sure it feels much like a birthday at all. Tack on the fact that I had to buy my own birthday gift of socks since my mother is not around to do it this year, and perhaps it’s a wash.

Birthdays have never mattered to me. But I feel like I would have liked for my last birthday with these two significant people to have meant more. It was not particularly memorable. I know I talked to both of them, but there was nothing significant really. Just another day, another birthday.

At once, it doesn’t feel like it has been a year from then and also feels like fifty years have passed. Everything is different from then and not just because two of the most important people in my life are gone. I have moved, I have acquired a second dog, I have faced an incredible number of challenges. Do I feel accomplished? Not really. Mostly, I feel tired. Marking the time that has passed just makes everything more real.

Time flows on. I don’t know how to feel about it. It feels like the world ought to have stopped, but it continues. Marking that feels especially strange. That is grief I think.