Anniversary

How do you want to remember someone who has died? Someone close to you. My brother died on the 10th of January 2009. Today is the 10th of January 2010. Tomorrow is my birthday. Strange that for the rest of my life, my birthday to me will be a time of celebration of my life, but it is the time of my brother's death. People, friends, relatives have been calling it, 'his anniversary'. Is that really what they want? Do they realise that if they continue to think of this day as 'his Anniversary', that they are merely going to remember him each year by his death, and all the bad stuff that goes along with that. Will they remember his birthday too? Unfortunately, I think not. People in general I find to be incredibly selfish and insensitive. They say and do things regularly that are really quite repugnant to me. Even friends. The thing is, they seem blissfully unaware of this. I cannot tell someone how I feel each time this happens, because that would merely be stressful for me.
I will not commemorate his death I have decided. I want to keep my birthday. I will never be able to forget his death, and it doesn't help to have others trying to make an occasion out of it. It is for me and me alone. They can get together if they want, for drinks or dinner. I must be alone with it. The date he died will not be his 'Anniversary'. If anything, his birthday should be, it was after all, the date he entered this world. I suppose it is just too much to have to relive in my mind, all too vividly, finding him dead. That happened, today one year ago.
They say love is the opposite of fear. That fear cannot exist in the presence of love. This is not true. People talk and talk, and most of the things they say, are just to make them feel good at the time. I love him, and loved him intensely, forever, a burning ferociously protective brotherly love, no connection will ever match it's strength. And simultaneously I am afraid. I am terrified. Of what? I cannot at this moment be specific. Perhaps, the sheer reality of my situation. I have no-one left really, no one whom I really love, or who loves me. Not like a blood brother.
I suppose what I am trying to get at here(eventually), is that I want to celebrate his life, not his death. I know no one want s to celebrate it exactly, but, jesus, no one's going to call me or send me messages or ask me if I want to have a few drinks or some dinner on Ruairi's birthday, are they? I'm quite sure they are not. Rather than complain or be too upset by any of this . . . I am going to make this clear to people perhaps. That's pretty much it.