Today would have been Penny's 52nd birthday.

I went to church because I was asked to stand in for someone else at the healing-prayer station.
Otherwise, I would have stayed hidden at home.

It was a good thing to be out, though. I talked to friends. I actually listened to Ken's sermon.

I wanted to leave a single purple long-stemmed rose at her spot on the memorial garden, but they didn't have any. Instead I got a "spray" - five peach-pink mini-roses on a single stem.

Talked with Susan Tait a bit about the birthday tradition - the three or four people whose birthdays were around the same time. This started in college. Brad's birthday is the 20th, there was another on the 23d with Penny, I think, and a third on one of the intermediate days. This resulted in a beginning-of-school-year orgy of celebrations. We resumed the communal big party when we moved back up here.

So.. it could have been a better day, or worse.
What does a birthday, the celebration of separate life, mean when someone has gone out of the immanent and present life in the world and into the permanent and transcendent life after?