I thought about setting my alarm, but I didn’t need to. I bolted upright just after midnight on Jan. 9, 2023. I was 64. I had made it.

I waited several hours before calling my older brother, Jay, who lives in an earlier time zone. He’s the only person who knew my secret, knew that for every day of being 63, I fought against a formidable emotional current, hyper-alert to yellow lights, deliberating ridiculously when picking airplane seats, hesitating before heading to the lake on my bike.

I was 29 years old when my beloved dad died at age 63 of malignant melanoma. I have grieved for him ever since in all the “normal” ways[SC1]  — on his birthday and Father’s Day, and days when someone is enjoying a root beer float (his favorite) or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.

But 2022 – the year I would turn 63 myself — threw me for a loop. I doubt there’s a clinical term for what I experienced, so I called it my “Grief Birthday,” for which only one wish seemed appropriate:

64.

Jay understood because he’d lived through it a few years earlier. First, the anxious build-up to that milestone birthday. Then the trepidation, not daily but often, for 365 days. Finally, the not-insignificant guilt of moving past the milestone and reaching the age our father did not.

Turns out we weren’t alone. While 63 was “our” year, many friends confirmed their own grief birthday experiences, and their unique emotions around them.

Dana’s accomplished mother died in a tragic accident at age 66. At 65, Dana is gearing up for her own 66th birthday in October, unsure of which age will be harder – 66 – or 67 when she moves into a future of which her mother was cheated.

Elise also turns 66 this year and recently realized that when she does, she will have lived more years without her father – who died when she was 33 – than years with him. She describes the feeling as “being unmoored.”

Alyssa’s mom was diagnosed with cancer at 47, then died at 49. The mother of three young sons, Alyssa just turned 42, “and every year I get closer to her death age, I notice myself becoming more aware of an undercurrent of fear surrounding the possibility of my own death,” she told me. “Now I am noticing the what-if moments in regard to my children. What if I don’t see them graduate, get married, get wildly hurt without their mother to soothe them, have children of their own. It’s like a preemptive grief that might not happen, but also could.”

Michel Rousseau is a psychotherapist who specializes in aging, grief and loss at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis. He wasn’t at all surprised by my angsty email to see if I might pick his brain on the topic. While his clinical lens and primary case load is clients who are 50 and older, he said that people of any age can, and do, face this “very important and notable life transition.”

“It’s such a personal experience,” he says, “tied to that individual and their parents, whatever age their parent passed away.”

But I needed to know: How do we untether ourselves from this emotional weight and move forward to embrace whatever days and years we have left?

Rousseau said I was right to demystify my worry by reaching out to my brother, and also by naming my little monster. While grief birthday won out, angst anniversary came in a close second.

“When people can do that [naming] in a therapy setting or outside of therapy, it helps them make sense of it,” Rousseau says, “helps them figure out how and where to file that experience. And that helps to validate the experience.”

It’s also perfectly normal to – as the name suggests — grieve anew, he says, as our own years increase and the list of our parent’s missed joys – dance recitals, wedding anniversaries, grandchildren, bucket list travels – piles up.

Eventually, though, the real work – and joy — of living can begin anew. Moving beyond the grief birthday, Rousseau says, “can be empowering. I can now craft my own narrative, carry on my own family legacy.”

Alyssa, though still in her 40s, exemplifies that goal, transforming the ache of her mother’s untimely death into what she describes as a “more enriching time” with her boys because of her experience. Elise finds comfort in realizing that her father did spend meaningful time with her two older boys before his passing; now a grandmother of three, she too revels in this role.

Dana said she’s moving past her tragedy with “a different kind of gratitude,” than she might have experienced with a mother who lived into her 90s. “I understand these certain moments are not a given,” she says.

“I’m not trying to project myself into the future. As my mom always said, ‘Be where your feet are.’ I have a perspective of gratitude that a lot of people might not have.”

I feel that gratitude, too, coupled with a strong desire to get going. Pinged with a mortality reminder earlier than most has led to a surprising and welcome second wind that I’m riding to chase long-tabled projects, travel and spend more time with people I love.

I know that nothing is guaranteed – that I could have been hit by a bus at age 64-and-a-day. Instead of dwelling on that, I’m feeling awake and open to possibilities.

I’m still cautious, but no longer obsessed. I get on my bike and on planes, and I drive through yellows, after looking both ways, of course.

And I always say yes to birthday cake.

Gail Rosenblum is a journalist, film producer and very happy grandmother. She last wrote for Minnesota Good Age about the complexities of getting rid of stuff.