My father passed away in 2009. It wasn’t the best of deaths, myelodysplastic syndrome into leukemia, because my family did not have the financial foundation necessary for chemotherapy. I don’t struggle with how my father died. My father’s line has a longstanding practice of dying when they’re good and ready and not a minute before, no matter how much our existence aggrieves someone else. I rather like that tradition, and I can only step back and respect my father’s choice, as he respected many of my choices, even the ones I made that were inconvenient for him.

A few years before my dad passed, we found out that we had been celebrating the day of his birth … on the wrong day. Dad was born to Polish immigrants that observed Orthdox Christmas. Rather than cram a birthday in right next to Christmas, my Bucza waited until all the observances were over.

Dad had no idea until he filed for full retirement. He had spent 70+ years on the wrong birthday. From a magician’s perspective, I can see where my father might have sidestepped a few folk influences just because they didn’t have the right tag lock on him. (How he didn’t marry a Polish girl was something of a mystery, often inappropriately expressed to me while I was growing up.)

To me, there was another level of appeal: my father had an honest to deity UnBirthday! How magickal, mysterious, and whimsical is that?