I have that thing on FB that send me notifications when one of my friends is celebrating their Birthday.  I like this feature!  I like it for two reasons:  I like to send Happy Birthday Greetings and I love Birthdays!!!  Period!

So, today, I received my notification that I had two friends celebrating a Birthday today.

I immediately opened the link to see who was having a birthday.  The first person is actually a Minister these days!  Who would have thought that this person would go into the ministry!?!  I mean, I have known them forever!  I know all of the pranks we pulled back in Jr. High and High School!  So, seeing that it was their Birthday, well, all of those memories came flooding back and made me giggle.  I wished him a Happy Birthday and moved on to see who was my second friend having a Birthday.

This second person, brought my giggling to an abrupt stop.

This second person is somebody with whom I attended college.  We were in music groups together.  We toured a major portion of the Eastern part of the United States during our 4 year tenure in college.  I had a lot of fond memories about this person as well.

So, why did my happiness stop?

This friend passed suddenly this past Spring.  He was my age.  I think I was a few months older than him.  He just up and had a heart attack leaving behind a wife and teenage son.

They have not, as yet, deleted his FB account.  The thought has probably ever occurred to them that they need to do this.

This made me sad.

It did, however, begin to bring back a flood of memories of the great times we had touring on weekends and Spring Breaks with our other music nerd friends.

I wonder how his wife and son are doing.  This will have been the first time having his Birthday with him being gone.  Probably not a really great day for them, to be sure.

So, today was a day of memories.  Happy and sad and happy again!

Happy Birthday, friends!