I turned 43 on Wednesday the 14th – I share a birthday with some illustrious folk, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Katherine Mansfield, Winnie the Pooh, and Susan of A life in books.

I passed a pleasant, low-key day: a roofer was here in the morning to finish replacing our bathroom roof; I took a long walk out to the edge of the countryside; I read from a few books I was enjoying, including a couple birthday-appropriate ones; we went out to dinner at our favourite restaurant, which serves seasonal English tapas; there were some tipples; and back at home I opened my gifts (books plus a book token to buy more, a gin Advent calendar, vermouth, and chocolate marzipan) and had a slice of the chocolate caramel cheesecake my husband made for me from Hummingbird Bakery’s Cake Days cookbook.

I planned to put up an album on Facebook the next day with a wry quote from Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad about My Neck (“According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that’s that”) and the Munch’s-Scream emoji. I was mildly vexed with my husband for taking a photo of me that shows the silver coming in at my hairline and wasn’t sure if I’d include that one. I had it all planned out, clever me.

Then I woke up to a message from my dad saying my sweet cousin Dawn had died some hours ago – the middle of the night our time, but 8:30 p.m. their time, so still my birthday. I can’t pretend we were close: she was part of my dad’s Georgia clan but relocated to Oklahoma 30 years ago, and I don’t think I’d seen her in the flesh in nearly 35 years. We kept in touch at a Christmas card sort of level over the years.

I can’t say it was a huge shock, either: she came home on hospice, bedbound with incurable lung disease, in late September. But we’d done a video chat with her earlier in the month and she seemed so well and optimistic that we – even my sister, a hospice nurse who’s seen this play out many times – thought we were looking at months, not days. Then she got pneumonia again, on top of her existing issues, and it was just too much for her body to take. She was 54.

This instantly put things into perspective for me. I’m so glad we reconnected, though we should have done more, and sooner. It was beautiful to see photos of her with her mother and brothers, who visited her for several days and left not knowing it was two days before the end. Right to her last she was thinking of others and making connections; she even wrote me birthday wishes, which made her loss seem all the more surreal.

Now, on each birthday, I’ll remember my cousin and the family she left behind. It feels right, something to be philosophical about rather than resent. A reminder that life is fragile and bittersweet, and something I must always strive to be grateful for.

From my current earworm, Denison Witmer’s “Confessions”:

“Nothing seems as random as the gift of life, and I hope I’m not wasting mine.”