Happy Birthday Steve

     Today, this very day, July 29, marks the birthday of my late husband Steve Newby. If he were still alive he would be 63 years old today. He wouldn't want anyone to know it was his birthday. He would allow me to make a fuss if I did so privately, but he would still protest. The whole time I knew him, he was genuinely irritated when people made a big fuss over his birthday, although he did like the phone calls from his children and grandchildren. I never did understand it, but eventually came to accept as part of his Steve-ness. Anyone who knew Steve is undoubtedly smiling at the thought, as he was certainly one of a kind.
     What he would prefer, then, was to find something or someone else to celebrate, take the focus off himself. Our anniversary, for example, was the 27th (would've been 15 years) and another special day for me comes up on August 1. Those would be the things he would have made a big hoopla over.      
      Before we moved to Cooperstown we liked to plan a get-together, inviting family and friends over for a cookout and visit. We called it our Annual Gratitude Celebration. We'd have this somewhere around the last week of July or the first week of August, right around this part of the year. Of the last one I remember, Steve, Grandma Susie, and Grandma Margaret have all gone to Heaven now. Becky's in a nursing home, we're not sure where Ron is.  Of course that's not everybody, but it's probably about a quarter to a third of the number who were there that day.
     When we moved back, that was one of the things we were looking forward to doing once the remodel was complete, hosting our Annual Gratitude Celebration Cookouts. Oh, we cooked out a few times, Steve and I, just the two of us. Steve was a bit of a perfectionist (he considered this an insult, but I never meant it as one) and to his way of thinking we weren't "ready" to have a bunch of people over, still too much not done yet.
     Steve made such beautiful cabinetry that everything looked perfectly well finished just as it was, but the next thing on his project list when he departed this realm was drawer fronts, and then cabinet doors. I did find someone to make cabinet doors; the drawer fronts are still pending. Some things have just been hard to push through.
     All this and so much more is rolling through my mind today on the anniversary of Steve Newby's birth. I've known other families who would get together to celebrate the memory of a departed character, and I've thought about doing something like this, but just haven't been able to push through and make it happen. Meanwhile, Life is what happens when  you'e made other plans, or even whether you've made plans or not. Right now this memorial message is the best I can do. Were he alive, he would not like me to mention publicly that it was his birthday, but by golly, he's not here! Happy Birthday, Steve Newby!