4th Birthday

Yesterday was Hannah’s 4th birthday. Yes, she's a St. Patrick's Day baby!  It’s crazy that she is already 4. Seems like she was just born yesterday. Even crazier though is the fact that Dina barely got to see her turn 3, let alone 4. Last year Dina was in the hospital for Hannah’s birthday, and doing better. They let us use one of the small conference rooms on the floor so we had a small party with family. It was clearly not the way Dina wanted Hannah to be celebrating her birthday but she was alive and well enough to have all those visitors at once. It was supposed to be the exception, not the norm. Just over 3 weeks later Dina died. Now Hannah will never celebrate another birthday with her mother. It’s heartbreaking. They spent less than 3 years together (I take out the time that Dina was hospitalized because they were apart from each other so much). It seems so unfair to both of them.
We had a good birthday weekend with her party on Saturday, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston on Sunday and then lunch at an Irish pub in Boston yesterday but it doesn’t change the fact that it was just the two of us as opposed to the three of us.