Remembering

From my journal this morning:

I am trying not to worry, but the shape I'm (not) in is occupying my mind greatly. That, and being forgotten again at birthday time by D, J, and C, in a way. I should let this roll off. They are busy women and now live far from me -- farther, as my neighbour says, than I live from them. My SIL did call me on the day, yes -- "to check up on me", she said, three times during the course of our conversation. She never mentioned my birthday. Neither did I.

Being remembered is so important, though. In fact, it seems to me that it has become such a pre-occupation in our culture that people seek celebrity -- even in wierd and wonderful ways -- in order to make it happen, to ensure they are remembered.

That is not the sort of remembering I seek. I don't want to be notorious, or to achieve my "fifteen minutes of fame", as Andy Warhol put it. I simply want to be loved enough to be remembered on my birthday by my family and close friends.

Instead, I receive well wishes on Ravelry and Facebook from relatively unknown acquaintances, and from complete strangers!

Today, several thousand will be remembered because they were killed in the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a farmer's field on this day in 2001.

Wednesday, I was in the congregation that remembered K, wife of M, mother of H and J, who died last week of a rare and terrible cancer at the age of 46.

It is an honour and a duty and a privilege to remember those taken from us by war or disease, but there is something very sweet and special -- particularly so -- about being remembered when one is still among the living. If one is remembered on the small occasion of one's birth by those who are nearest and dearest, it is an affirmation of their love and friendship, an assurance of one's worth and an appreciation of one's life as it is now. That's why it means so much.