You could never celebrate this life fully for you were always weighed down by your worries. You could never let your soul soar to the skies for sadness cast its shadow like skeletons hung amidst sumptuous feasts to remind you that this too will pass.
Every year, your birthday was a celebration of the mixed life that you had, full of joys and sorrows though you had to learn how to treat it with equanimity: for one learnt this bitter stoic attitude quite early in life. There was no better teacher than my grandmother who sang the way of the cross in her sweet mellow voice during Lent.
For it was never an easy life; always a loss between the cup and the lip and when the ancient scale of weights is checked against feathers by the god of the underworld, he will not let you inside for its soaked with your tears for losses that you have suffered. Your heavy heart will never let you through.
