Thirteen years ago, on March 28, I left my City Hall job for my first day at a large, international corporation, working in Communications. Every day that first week,  I worried that I wouldn’t find my way back to my desk in the cubicle farm. 

Ten years ago, on March 28, I resigned that big private sector corporate job and returned to City Hall, where I’ve been, in various roles, ever since. It was a decision that was more closely aligned with my personal values. And it felt like going home. 

Being away for those three years gave me a new perspective about my work and what was important to me in my career. And, I returned to City Hall a much different person than when I’d left — having also been to hell and back in my personal life in those years. 

Though it was a relatively short time in the span of a life, or the span of a career, those three years turned out to be the most tumultuous of my life — to date. I want to say that I hope I never see anything like them again. And also, that I’m so grateful for them. 

That first year, in 2011, I spent many lunch hours sitting with my parents at the cancer centre, my mom hooked up to a chemo drip. And then, in the span of a few life-altering months the next year — the year the Mayan calendar said the world would come to an end — I came out, I left a 20-year marriage, and I nearly died of sepsis. It seems the world did end for a time. 

And then it began again. With time, and a lot of effort, came healing. Gradually, years of healing have brought with them some love and understanding — for the pain I felt I’d both suffered and inflicted and that I had, on so many days before, wished had not happened. Slowly, I became grateful for what I once wished had never found me. 

March 28 is sort of what I think of as Gratitude Day. Part of that is because it also happens to be the day my brother was born, 64 years ago now. Except he is forever 36, having lost his life in a Thanksgiving weekend accident on a country road more than half of my lifetime ago — when I was 25.

That he died was non-negotiable. That it opened an aperture into the deepest love I carried for him was inevitable. That I would wish that the sorrow that accompanied all that love had never found me felt like a shameful secret. 

There aren’t words yet for the gifts that came afterwards though. Life eventually began again. It was never the same — but I came to understand later that it was never supposed to be. I believe now that his death was a mirror for me. Held up like a beacon — shining in the distance — and meant to bring me to my own attention, so that I could change my life. 

Enduring his loss is how I knew that I would eventually find gifts in those three years of cataclysmic sorrow that would propel my life forward in ways I couldn’t yet imagine. Among them, I count the courage I found in that span of time to step away from everything I once knew — corporate jobs, my marriage, my identity — to make life-changing emotional and psychological shifts about who I am so that I can hopefully become the woman I’m supposed to be.

I don’t know how you thank someone — alive or dead — for a gift that magnanimous. I like to think that I do it a little each day, by living a life that fills me up and pushes me to grow — both heart and soul.

There are no more memories in the making for us, but I still feel him around me all the time. My March 28th decisions were gifts surely witnessed by both of us. And I know that the science and magic that brought him to me in this place, in this time, won’t ever be undone. 

He’s still here. Walking in the chambers of my heart, pressing his palms to the soft walls of my living. He listens to the radio of my memories. In his back pocket is a note. With every word we wished we’d said. He knows I am so grateful for what I once wished had never found me.

Once, he came in a dream and told me: “I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.” And he promised that, one day, I’ll be able say those words back to him. 

Until then. 

Happy Birthday.