My birthday is on April Fool’s Day. No Jokes.
For all my life I relished the date as an awesome day to celebrate a birthday. It’s a day where silly announcements are broadcast over the morning news headlines, fooling many but not all. Those who fall for it laugh at their gullibility and those who don’t give themselves a “you-can’t-fool-me” pat on the back. It’s a day where, as children in primary school, we used to run around putting “pinch me” signs on each other’s backs or scream in horror pretending to see a massive spider on the teacher’s shoulder. As an adult, it’s a day where my three children have put toothpaste in Oreo biscuits and ‘thoughtfully’ served me afternoon tea. Or they’ve held on to their hysterical laughter just long enough for me to take a drink from my salt filled water bottle.
Yes, April Fool’s Day is a day where everyone seems to have half a smile on their lips waiting to see what will happen to make them or someone else burst at the seams with laughter. What a great day April Fool’s Day is to celebrate your birthday!
Like most people, I’ve had many and varied birthday celebrations. As years go on, we celebrate less or at least, in different ways. Cards are not often sent and people now send text messages or post best wishes on Facebook timelines. Many friends send me lovely birthday messages but in some I sense the struggle at using the word “Happy”. Likewise, others are careful to construct a message sending love and wishes without using the word “Happy”. Some friends send lovely lengthy words of kindness and kinship. Beautiful, thoughtful birthday messages, every single one of them.
On my birthday in 2015 friends flocked to be by my side all day. Several close girlfriends descended on my house for birthday dinner and drinks. They bore gifts, they cooked, they ate, they drank, they cleaned up and they left. They didn’t know what else to do so, as only women do best, they gathered. I was not left alone for one minute. I was grateful for the attention I received. I did, however, request that they all leave my house at 8.30pm so I could be alone with my children. It was not a party. There was no celebration. There never will be. Yes, I’ll have birthday dinners or lunches, probably birthday drinks again, but that birthday will forever cast a dark shadow on April Fool’s Day for the rest of my birthdays to come.
It was a warm, balmy, summery day. Unusual for the 1st of April. My friends could have stayed and enjoyed the drinks and the chatter well into the evening. They didn’t though. They respectfully left in accordance with my wishes. My children and I sat together, alone in the latter part of the evening. We spent special quiet time on my birthday. Time together and alone. Time, we will never have again.
Then the time came. 10.00pm on Wednesday 1st April 2015; the night of my 44th birthday. Late enough on such a warm evening that no one would be out walking their dogs.
On that balmy, false, summery evening, under the cloak of darkness, a vehicle reversed into my driveway. The back was opened so that my two sons and I could view what was inside. I quietly inspected it. The boys, I could tell, were both surprised and moved by what they saw. The mere sight of it took my breath away. My heart simply froze and time stood still. It looked exactly as I had imagined it would. When the idea came to me months earlier, I didn’t realise it would arrive on my birthday, but there it was – my birthday present. No one else had been able to visualise it like me. No one else had the ability nor the clarity. For me though, the vision had been very clear. I was awestruck.
As my heart once again started to beat, without daring to move my gaze and in a barely audible voice, I whispered to the man standing beside me, “That’s just how I imagined it,”
“I’ve never seen one more perfect,” he quietly replied.
The two gentlemen calmly asked permission to enter our house. My sons and I stood in the hallway as they wheeled a large metal trolley into Pippa’s bedroom. They gently pulled back her Paris doona cover and carefully lifted her from where she had been lying for four days. They placed my precious daughter on the sterile trolley, covered her up again and silently wheeled her out our front door. It took less than a minute and it was all done in complete silence.
In our driveway, they rolled the trolley into the back of the hearse beside the white coffin I had especially designed for her. Despite the warmth, a chill went down my spine as I stared once again at her casket. It was covered in so many of her beautiful colourful drawings. Drawings and words that had been created by her little hands. The same little hands that would always, without fail, slip into mine as we were walking.
The largest drawing was a of big red love heart positioned on the centre of both sides with the word “Mummy” happily handwritten above. Beside it, a perfect picture of a rose, “Mummy’s Rose”. Puppy dogs, rainbows, birds, friends, suns shining and dolphins swimming, all covered the sides. There was so much colour. A picture of the Eiffel Tower adorned the top of the casket and the most exquisitely painted purple, yellow and blue butterfly majestically graced each end.
A cold, horrid white coffin had been brought to life through Pippa’s bright, cheerful, innocent drawings and paintings.
The men closed the doors and drove away. Tears streaming down our faces, James, Patrick and I went back inside our house; our home that now had one less member of our little family in it.
The next day, two years ago today, on the 2nd April 2015, over a thousand people attended a celebration of Pippa’s 11 beautiful years in our life. They gathered on the lush green grass under a tree canopied blue sky in the beauty and tranquility of the botanical gardens. They watched photos and videos of Pippa come to life on a 5-metre screen. They listened to her brothers and me speak her eulogies. The duck pond surrounded by weeping willows and with its lily pads and quaint cobble-stoned bridge formed a perfect back drop for the service.
Finally, as she was carried through the crowd and over the little stone bridge to a reading from Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree, one thousand people were fascinated and transfixed, gazing in wonder at the beautiful casket – my birthday present.
April Fool’s Day is my birthday and now, every year, I will cry if I want to.
Pippa Rea 