Yesterday, May 8th, was Jon's birthday. He would have been 51. I emailed him in the morning. There is no point in emailing him, no-one receives those emails but it's a slight connection to the man i loved, as a lover and then later as a devoted friend. 
The sun was shining and i had decided over the weekend to mark his birth date by treading some of the paths we used to tread together, reflecting and negotiating with the ongoing sadness that is mine since his death. Negotiating with death is an odd conversation. Someone dies, their material form no longer exists except perhaps in their possessions or objects connected to them whilst they were alive or places where memories were made. 
The memories count for most i think. It seems that i was able to scourge many of my bitter memories of Jon before visiting Gozo. While there i was able to reconnect to the life we had that was beautiful, the beautiful in him, in me and in us. That was a holy relief and since returning has been a source of spiritual uplift. 
There's regret in me that he isn't able to hear the glorious birdsong that this May has offered but it is met by memories of listening to birdsong in his arms, in my home and his and in various holiday cottage bedrooms. And the same as i walk in sunshine, on streets or green pathways, i know that once upon a time he was beside me, holding my hand, looking at the flowers and the butterflies and other bugs, enjoying life. 
I cannot change his physical absence, it is what it is. His death has in some ways allowed me to recall him with all the love i felt for him in our first few years when it felt like the honeymoon would never end. When you break up from a lover it is best not to give too much time to those memories because it makes the loss of the loved one harder to accept. In death it is different, the lines of conflict no longer exist, i no longer need to protect myself from further hurt and now he is dead the demons that took hold of our relationship have retreated and no longer threaten my wellbeing in quite the same way. 
For his birthday I took my usual bus. I walked past his house, his home, the home we shared for six years and took the path up the hill to the field that he took me to the first night that i slept over at his. I'll admit to a few tears. I loved him. I wish, of course, that he was still alive even with the pain his living being hung around my neck. But there it is he isn't and that's life. Death is going to hit us all sometime. And even if we'd lived happily ever after for forty years one or other of us would have had to go first most likely. 
I walked over the field to the road that leads to where the black dog still lives, old and slow and more portly now, still barking but not so game to greet or harass. Then took the short path that connects the road to the wide concrete strips that i assume are ancient war relic aerodrome tracks. There were buzzards flying in the bright-bright blue sky, and skylarks, and i stopped to watch a female orange tip on the short purple flower that Jon and i always forgot the name of and looked up in books after our walks. A bugloss maybe, i don't know i haven't looked it up. The sun was hot, the shadows sharp. I thought what is the point of marking the birthday of someone who is dead. I mean they are dead so they no longer have a birthday, who knows, if they have been reborn they may even already have a new birthday. But still a birthday is a calendared mark, maybe Jon's is more important to his blood family who generally took it on with a gathering from which i was excluded after the first year. 
After a while of walking i got to the tree that was one of our walk markers and sat and smoked a roll-up, and ate an apple, and thought about the fella, and the life we had together, and was thankful for the time i knew him even tho' it was not long. Then back past his house again, to my bus stop, enjoying the apple blossom and the ducklings and the horse in the paddock that let me stroke it's nose and forehead. All very soothing. Of course it's still sorrowful. I'm mourning. But my mourning has softened lately. I have a feeling that i will always miss the sweetness of him, but since Gozo that has returned to me as days and days and days of memories and nights of memories too it feels a bit as if he is with me anyway. Not in a creepy way, just as a kind of benign spirit holding me upright when i am finding life difficult, lonesome or sad. 
So there it goes. Jon's birthday and i hope it won't seem too silly that i marked the day or that i've blogged it but as my blog is kind of my journal it seems to make sense because Jon was important to me, he was important just because he existed and i loved him, and in all truth he remains important because he existed and i loved him, his death hasn't changed that. I think love transcends death. It does not cease but changes to accommodate the new circumstance.