Happy heavenly birthday, Robby!

 Today is Robby’s birthday. He would have been 53. It's weird to think he’ll always be 52 in my mind, never getting older. I guess he gets the last laugh once again because I always teased him about being older than me. He was about 7 years older, which doesn’t seem like a lot but can make for funny conversations. He would say something like, ‘I remember driving over to the movies to see Footloose and then driving around listening to the soundtrack for months.’ And I’d say something like, ‘I was 9.’ Then he was say, ‘We wore out that cassette tape on those drives.’ And I would say, ‘What’s a cassette tape?’ I would laugh and he would call me a smart ass. Now I get to be older by myself and he gets to be forever young.

For Robby’s birthday last year, we were in lockdown, so he was a little depressed. He always looked forward to his party. We would do a theme each year and I would make his cake—we did tiki Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, superheroes, pirates.  I can’t remember them all. Our friends would come over. We’d eat too much and drink too much and stay up late laughing. So, last year I set up a surprise for Robby to try to cheer him up. I had different sets of friend groups divided up into different Zoom happy hours. 

He didn’t know who I reached out to so it was a little surprise every hour as to who would show up. For some of those people, that was probably the last time they saw or spoke to Robby. He said it was one of his best birthdays ever. I think he stayed on Zoom until the early hours of the next day. I fell asleep on the couch listening to him tell stories with his friends and laugh. And once again, we ate too much and drank too much--and I wish we could do it all over again. Robby’s birthday is the last of the ‘firsts’ for this year. We’ve already done the first Halloween without him, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, first wedding anniversary, first of our birthdays, first day of school, etc. Next month will be the first anniversary of his death. And then we’ll move on to other reminders that he’s gone.

I guess it would be easy to sit around and mope all day, but that’s not celebrating Robby. He loved a good party and he loved to laugh. He loved having a good time with his family, his friends, and even total strangers he just met at the store while he’s picking up a bottle of rum for his birthday party (true story). So I guess we’ll get our butts off our shoulders (one of his favorite sayings) and do something fun to celebrate Big Daddy today. And I hope you will, too. Celebrate life. Celebrate love. Celebrate geeky stuff. Celebrate each other. And do it all with a cold Corona, a shot of rum, some Buffett in the background, and Jaws on the TV. Love you all! Happy Birthday, Robby!