Today is my 55th birthday.

It’s a bittersweet day.

Today I receive my small inheritance, half the proceeds from the sale of my late parents’ house.

From our parents’ perspective, this is a precious gift. Something that they, children of penniless immigrants, really wanted us to have. Something that would last longer than their lives. A gift of love, so that we would not have to struggle physically and emotionally as their parents did.

By the time they died, we were well-launched into adulthood and I’m sure they took it for granted that their loving teaching and role modelling would be with us always. Two weeks ago I dreamed that Mom came to visit and said she left us two million dollars each. I told my brother about the dream. He cried and said, “Four million dollars of love.”

Without my elders. I can’t imagine living 20 or 30 or even 40 more years. What would I do with myself? I feel like life ends or should end now.  I feel like Ann Lamott’s 7-year old son who said, “If I knew we weren’t going to die on the same day, I wouldn’t have agreed to be born.”

Grief hasn’t been all bad. It’s given me permission to cry out with questions, and to look fearlessly at inner monsters of rage and depression. Yes, I am learning things about myself I might rather not have known. But I have a bigger heart, I’m more of a whole person.

And I had a lovely pre-birthday weekend. Saturday night, I went to a party and laughed for three hours. Sunday I skyped with my son in Israel. I went to brunch with my daughter and husband, and later we watched Game of Thrones together. My husband and I had a healing conversation about something that has been bothering us.

Today, I did my homework for a depth psychology course, “Imaginal Ways of Knowing.” One assignment directed us to choose an image and travel with it. I chose an unsettling picture of 11-month old Keely cat sleeping in the laundry basket, yawning. She looks absolutely monstrous — just like the inner me I’m meeting these days. So I wrote:

Her wide mouth is a narrow walkway with abysses on either side, disappearing into darkness, like the bridge at Khazad-dum. The passage gets bigger an bigger and I might just walk in. … Her teeth are like stalactites hanging over a slippery, unmapped path with little barbs popping up and disappearing with no discernible algorithm, like life, like walking along the path of life. So far it seems safe but I can’t see ahead; it’s like driving in Cape Breton National Park in the dark, where I have to have faith that the road continues.

I have to let Mom and Dad’s and Sylvia’s gift make me happy. I can’t squander it in unhappiness. It’s meant to give me a sense of well-being. Whatever I do with it, I have to create a future. I can’t give up now, not when they are counting on me to continue. They expected to die before me; in fact, they hoped to. They really, really wanted me to know there’s a path ahead.

Just after rush hour, I drive to FedEx to pick up the package from my brother. Inside is an envelope with a cheque. On the envelope, my brother has written, “Happy birthday darling, with love, from Mom and Dad.”

I am not making this up.

Image: My 8th birthday party, with Mom and Aunt Sylvia.