Neve's birthday celebrations
A lifetime of birthdays
It was Neve’s 11th birthday earlier this month.
Up to and including her seventh, Neve’s birthdays were no different to the rest of our family birthdays. A day for pain au chocolat for breakfast, gifts, cake, good food, chocolate, friends and family. A slight blip for her fifth birthday, in 2017; I had rashly assured Neve that her birthday would occur before the new baby arrived. In actual fact, a two week old baby sister was an unexpected component of that birthday celebration. But mostly, her birthdays were predictable enough, happy affairs.
Cancer, in the form of an aggressive brain tumour, brought change to these celebrations. Neve’s eighth birthday, in 2020, had a certain unfamiliarity, with new undertones. The day, tinged with both preciousness and precariousness, was a day to hold on to. My hunch was that Neve’s birthdays might already be limited. However, based on what we knew medically, there was every reason to imagine another birthday, the following year.
Change happened quickly. Mere days after her eighth birthday, we were given her terminal diagnosis. One to twelve months – was this recent birthday in fact destined to be her last? Over the following year, as Neve grew more and more unwell, it felt increasingly clear that she was unlikely to be alive to see in her ninth birthday.
Yet, Neve being Neve, she surprised us all by not only living through her ninth birthday (2021) but also her tenth (2022).
It is worth pausing for a moment, to mention an extra birthday, between her ninth and her tenth. Around that time, we threw a bijou gathering for a much loved nurse’s birthday, which fell on her working day. It was not long after this joyful afternoon that birthday conversations with Neve took an unexpected twist. Being of a capricious nature, she became adamant that we had in fact celebrated an extra birthday for her too.
Cue numerous months of uncertainty, with Neve both insisting that she was already ten but simultaneously appearing uncertain that this was quite right. The world around Neve was able and willing to uphold this narrative for her. What would any of us have gained, in arguing with a confused child with increasing cognitive and memory issues, who was dying? An extra birthday was the least that we could do. This narrative, so important to Neve at the time, was maintained for as long as she needed it, at home and on hospice visits.
As her real tenth birthday approached, clarity felt increasingly important. Reaching double digits had not been expected, when we had received her terminal diagnosis, two years before. Were we really going to pretend she was turning eleven? Conversations were had, explanations occurred, planning took place and a tenth birthday was celebrated. It was a day of oscillating emotions, a joyful and bittersweet day. We will never know whether she in fact viewed it as her second tenth birthday.
By this point, I had no idea what to expect next, no way of knowing what Neve’s eleventh birthday would look like. From her tenth birthday onwards, through the beginning of 2023, it felt possible that she would still be with us for this next birthday. Given that she was already outliving her prognosis, surely she would still be alive on her eleventh birthday? How could she not be?
Yet alongside the expectation of another birthday with Neve, many a day went by where she was so ill that I could not imagine her living long enough to reach November 2023.
I think back to 2021, her ninth birthday, to what we once imagined would be Neve’s last celebration. It was hard to know how you celebrate a child’s cake, when it might be their final one. Decorating her cake, I was unrestrained. I cut out the middle of the cake and filled it with countless M&Ms. Then, as requested, I covered the whole cake in more M&Ms. Surely it would be impossible to have too many M&Ms, especially if this will be your last birthday cake?
Needless to say, when birthday time came round again, in 2022, I wondered how I could top the year before. One obvious way was a breakfast upgrade, from the bake from frozen pain au chocolate to homemade chocolate buns.
But how many times can you make the best cake ever, the final birthday cake? In the end, I went with her request, which was rather simple. Neve didn’t actually like cake that much, but she certainly enjoyed the idea of cake. Chocolate cake, of course. Blue, red and purple icing, please. Only to discover, as I set to work decorating, that most of my food colouring and piping bags were nowhere to be found. Yellow icing was the only option. There ensued a rollercoaster of emotions.
“The wrong colours;
A disaster;
How could it be;
I love it;
It is like the sunshine;
The best cake ever.”
As May 2023 approached, I had vague plans for a half-birthday celebration, knowing that it was looking less and less likely that she would make it all the way to her eleventh birthday. Inspired by a friend, I planned to make a half cake. I am sure Neve would have been up for a celebration, for party hats; even better if there were gifts.
Her tenth birthday cake, the sunshine yellow one, turned out to be Neve’s final cake, her last birthday celebration. She died only weeks before her half birthday. The half-birthday cake was never made.
We have the bake-from-frozen pain au chocolate and croissant breakfast tradition too.
I am much like Sheila in maintaining a connection to the birth (and death) dates of people who are no longer alive. Each year, I even think of my paternal grandfather — whom I never met because he died 10 years before I was born — on the anniversary of his death, April 13. I know I will never forget Neve's birthday.