August 16th My birthday shares some footnotes in history. On this day Mr Pemberton, inventor of Coca Cola, Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind” and Elvis Presley all died on this date. For my friends who. like me. enjoy putting a literal slant on things, they died in different years. But for the most part the only significant event which comes to mind, this is the day I made my entrance onto this blue marble we call Earth. Now at the completion of my sixty-sixth revolution around the sun I begin my sixty-seventh journey. For the first time since I was 16, I have no plans. Not a one year, nor five year, nor 10 year “what if” plan. I had over six years to be planning. Those long nights of watching Meredith sleep, those mornings when Natalya was bathing and dressing her in the mornings, waiting for her to wake up again to have breakfast. Watching her succumb to this disease by slowly “progressing”, (how I have hated that phrase”), getting weaker, loss of voluntary motor control, unable to swallow or talk. Knowing her pilgrimage on this planet was going to end before mine. Knowing this transition from care giver to widower was going to be difficult. But I had no clue as to how empty my life would become. So at the close of my first birthday as a widower, a single person who has garnered close to a hundred “Facebook click here to send greeting”, two cards, no phone calls, I am again in front of the computer. Tired of everybody I run into singing Carol King to me, “You just call out my name, anything you need just call me…..” Before Meredith passed, people would say “Is there anything you need let me know” and I started responding with my favorite Stephen Wright punch line “I need to paint my house.” Suck it up Buttercup, pity party is over.