Today is Mom’s 60th birthday. She kept saying leading up to her birthday this year that she wasn’t looking forward to it. She didn’t want to turn 60. But now here we are, ready or not it came and ready or not it’s happening. Sister K, Husband and I will be heading home tomorrow evening to celebrate with a family dinner.

We have had a lot of debate in our house over Mom’s birthday this year and the possibility of throwing her a party. Because 60 is one of those birthdays. It’s a big one and with big birthdays people sometimes have parties. We went back and forth over it and ultimately decided the timing wasn’t there for it. This is for a lot of reasons, most of which have to do with MS. Parties can be stressful and stress seems to flare up Mom’s MS. The two go hand in hand. As well, a lot of people haven’t seen Mom since her relapse and it would be stressful on her to know she was going to be seeing a lot of people for the first time. You also need to be on time to parties, primarily when they are your own. In case you are just tuning into this blog, my family is never on time for anything anymore. And on top of everything else but a very selfish reason- recently Sister K and I haven’t enjoyed seeing a lot of Mom’s friends.  Because when we see them we get asked a lot of questions about Mom and to put it bluntly we are just “over it.”

But I think this was one of those instances where we really did something in the best interest of Mom’s MS and really thought through the scenarios. I have to believe in the past we would’ve pushed ourselves to act as we always would have- succumbed to the pressure placed on us to throw a party and celebrate. Pressure placed on us by strange invisible voices, based on nothing in particular other than ourselves. So for the first time, we ignored the voices and blocked them out. We realized those ideas and plans don’t align with where we are at in our family. Mom never really made a decision one way or the other so in many ways we made it for her.

So instead we are going to go home and have a birthday dinner with just our family. Go out to a nice restaurant- probably be running 30 minutes late by the time we get out the door and it won’t matter one bit because it will just be us. Relaxed, carefree and celebrating Mom. To me it sounds like a perfect birthday considering where we are all at and a perfect way to honor Mom this year on her special day.

Happy 60th Birthday Mom!

Do you throw birthday parties for big birthday occasions? Do you ever feel pressure to celebrate and throw a birthday party for yourself or others? Would you consider this letting MS controlling our lives or being realistic with the MS in our lives? Do you think we made the right decision?