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How to Choose a “Happy Birthday” Card After a Tragedy

I ran into Walgreen’s for my favorite lipstick, one I just bought last week to replace the one I’d lost; I’d actually already replaced it last week and managed to lose the new one too. This is your brain on trauma.

While there, I thought I’d knock another task off my list — that of buying my son, who will be 20 in a couple of weeks, a birthday card. It didn’t occur to me that this would be a task fraught with peril.

There’s no occasion section called “birthday cards for young men whose fathers committed suicide last year.”

Given that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 47,000 people took their lives in 2017, maybe there should be. But there won’t ever be, of course. It’s too gruesome, too sad even for this Age of Pathos, Suffering and Victimhood in which we seem determined to wallow.

So there I was, trying desperately to avoid all the cards that had “We” or “Our” on the front

Nope, can’t get those anymore. Gotta move to the “I” section, because of course I can’t get a card that says, “Son, we’re so proud of you.” There’s no “we” anymore.

Unfortunately, in between the “We” and “I” cards were the “From Your Dad” cards. Don’t need those anymore either.

Virtually every card contained words or phrases that now take on such a different meaning:

“I hope all your dreams come true” — except the one about your father watching you get married. Sorry, no can do.

“You’ve brought me so many wonderful memories”

Yeah, you have, but I know it still feels like your father apparently didn’t have enough of those to see him through whatever crisis occurred in his mind just eight days after your 19th birthday. And please, don’t tell me how his decision had nothing to do with us. I know that, intellectually. But the logical mind is often cold comfort.

“I’m so proud of seeing how you handle all of life’s challenges” — definitely not going there this year, no sirree.

So what can I say? Here are some of things I’d like to say:

Try to have a happy 20th birthday, son.

I know it sucks that he chose to pick up a gun instead of the phone to call someone to get help before it was too late.

I wish he’d chosen just to tell us he was leaving us — because as long as you’re still breathing, there’s the chance of reconciliation, of redemption. Look, dude, if you were unhappy, you could have just left but remained here on earth.

As for me, I allowed myself to wallow for just a few minutes

Then I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and chose a card that, I hope, strikes the right balance between acknowledgement of the fact that it’s the first “I” card you’re getting from me — no, wait. There is no balance to be struck here. Life jumped on the other end of that seesaw and flung you into an eternity of “Cards from Mom,” and I’d do anything in the world to change that.

But I can’t. Instead, I got you a card that expresses what we’re doing more often than not to survive this gruesome year of firsts, a card that pretends that everything is normal. In fact, it doesn’t contain a single instance of “I,” “Mine,” “We,” “Us,” or “Ours.” It just seems better that way.