Birthday's are forever.

I had finished reading Tom's bedtime stories and was lying with him while he fell asleep.  It has, lately, become a special, companionable time which feels like a little, warm cubby hole, separate from the world.  He usually makes random little comments from his day as he drifts off and tonight it was " Special Agent Oso says a birthday is forever but it isn't, it's just for one day isn't it mummy?".  I murmured something soothing, but my brain kicked in and I was thinking
...well, yes your birthday is just one day a year, but it is forever the day of your birth and so in that sense, your birthday is forever, just like the 4th of January will always be Grandpa's birthday, even though he isn't with us anymore...
and in that moment, with that thought, a vast, yawning, gaping precipice of a cavern opened up right through my chest like a physical thing.  My eyes filled and I was right back there in that first, raw grief.  Every year the 4th of January will come, to me it will always be my Dad's birthday, but he will never be there again.  Birthdays are forever, people are not.