By Helene Waters

Birthdays.

Funny little things.

If nothing else, they’re remarkably consistent.

They arrive every year whether you’re ready for them or not.

As children, birthdays are magical. There is cake, presents, excited countdowns and, at least once in your childhood, a traumatic incident involving a jumping castle where you become trapped in the folds while your so-called friends continue bouncing with the enthusiasm of caffeinated kangaroos, completely ignoring your cries for help.

In your twenties, life feels as though it is beginning.

Careers are taking shape. Relationships become serious. Thoughts of marriage, homes and children start appearing. You begin building an identity that belongs to you rather than one borrowed from parents, teachers and society.

In your thirties, much of life feels established.

You know what you like.

You know what you don’t.

You’ve spent years bending yourself into shapes that fit other people’s expectations and are beginning to realise how uncomfortable some of those shapes are.

Families grow.

Responsibilities multiply.

The future feels endless.

Then your forties arrive.

Birthdays become quieter.

More reflective.

You spend less time thinking about where you’re going and more time looking at where you’ve been.

You think about mistakes.

You think about victories.

You think about the people who walked beside you and the people who didn’t make it this far.

---

On 4 June, I turned forty-six.

And for the first time in my life, a birthday felt surreal.

Because forty-six is the age my late husband reached.

It stopped me in my tracks.

For twenty-six years, Barry was older than me.

That was simply how the universe worked.

Then suddenly I realised something I had never considered before.

He will never be older than me again.

For the rest of my life, I will continue ageing.

And he won’t.

---

The thing nobody tells you about loss is that time becomes uneven.

When someone dies, we tend to focus on the obvious things.

The empty chair.

The silence.

The absence.

The birthdays they miss.

The Christmases that arrive without them.

But nobody prepares you for the strange arithmetic that follows.

The way life quietly continues counting for one person while completely stopping for another.

Barry will always be forty-six.

Forever.

His age is fixed now.

Permanent.

Frozen in place like a photograph.

Meanwhile, I will turn forty-seven.

Then forty-eight.

Then fifty.

If I am fortunate, sixty.

Perhaps even seventy.

I will collect wrinkles, grey hairs, aches, wisdom and stories.

He won’t.

There is something profoundly unsettling about realising that the person who once felt permanent in your life is now permanently the same age.

The older I become, the younger he will seem.

Not because he is changing.

Because I am.

The man who once felt older, wiser and somehow ahead of me on the road of life will slowly become younger in my memories than the woman remembering him.

And that feels impossible.

---

When I was twenty, forty-six seemed old.

When I was thirty, forty-six seemed experienced.

Now that I am forty-six, it feels surprisingly young.

Young enough to still have plans.

Young enough to still have dreams.

Young enough to assume there would be more time.

Perhaps that is why this birthday felt different.

It wasn’t sadness exactly.

Not entirely.

It was awareness.

A sudden understanding that life is both extraordinarily long and heartbreakingly short.

Long enough to build a life.

Short enough for it to change completely when you least expect it.

---

This birthday was strange for other reasons too.

At 03:49 in the morning, my phone buzzed.

A message from someone 13,000 kilometres away.

Someone who had once been a significant part of my life.

Someone I hadn’t expected to hear from.

As I sat there reading his words in the darkness, I found myself thinking about time again.

About the people we lose.

The people who leave.

The people who find their way back.

And the people who remain woven into our stories whether we planned for it or not.

Life has a funny way of reminding us that not every ending is as final as we think it is.

Some chapters close.

Others simply pause.

---

And while I spent part of my birthday thinking about the man who stopped at forty-six, I also found myself thinking about something else.

The privilege of continuing.

Because not everybody gets another birthday.

Not everybody gets another candle.

Not everybody gets another year.

Getting older is often treated as something to resist.

Something to joke about.

Something to hide.

But there is a quiet privilege in reaching an age that somebody else never had the opportunity to reach.

There is privilege in the wrinkles.

Privilege in the grey hairs.

Privilege in the laugh lines.

Privilege in the lessons learned the hard way.

Privilege in simply being here.

---

So this year, there were forty-six candles.

Forty-six years of mistakes.

Forty-six years of lessons.

Forty-six years of love, grief, triumph, embarrassment, growth, heartbreak, laughter and survival.

And as strange as this birthday felt, perhaps that was the lesson it arrived carrying.

Life keeps moving.

Time keeps counting.

And while there are people we wish could walk beside us for longer, the greatest way to honour those we have loved is not by standing still beside their memory.

It is by continuing.

One candle at a time.