Nothing But My Version of Ordinary

My firstborn child,

There are days that I still miss you so much. I wish that I could reach up to Heaven and hold you, or talk to you and see what your personality is like. You have a brother now. It's strange to think that he's your little brother, yet he's already 10 times older than you will ever be. I wish that there was a way to bring you back to us, healthy and whole, so that our family would be whole again. There's always someone missing, always a hole where you should be.

Sometimes I look at Brian and Keith and I just can't believe that you'd be doing all the things that they're doing now. You'd be running around, getting into things, maybe even talking back and giving me lip. You'd be well into the stubborn terrible two's. Would you like trains and cars? Would you be obsessed with your favorite color and fight your naps? I like to think that you'd be a good big brother, trying to help Grant learn new things and being protective of him even when he's driving you crazy. I like to think that you'd like to crawl into my lap and give me slobbery toddler kisses and bear hugs and let me sing you sleep.

I know that your life wouldn't have been easy if you'd stayed. You would have needed at least two more major heart surgeries, and really you probably would have needed a transplant. When I look at the pictures of you from right before you left us, you looked so tired and like you were in such pain. I know that you don't hurt where you are, but oh your daddy and I hurt. Is it selfish of us to wish that you'd lived, even though your life would have been full of hardships and physical pain? I guess I'm selfish, because it still feels so wrong to have you gone.

Other moms talk about their angel children visiting them in their sleep, but I don't think I've ever had a real visit from you. I don't know if that's because I just don't remember the dreams or if you can't come to see me, but I get so jealous of those other mom's dream visits. I'd be able to see you and hold you again, even if it was just in my dreams. If it's okay, could you come to see me, just once? I've even thought about paying a shyster medium, just for the glimmer of a chance that I could talk to you again. Then again, you were so little when you died, well before the age you could have spoken- would you be able to talk to me? I just want to know that you're okay, that death isn't the end. I want to believe in heaven and that I'll see you again, but it's so very hard when I can't know for sure.

Sweet boy, I don't cry for you every day anymore, but not a day goes by that I don't think about you and what might have been. I love you, your daddy loves you, and your brother will know about you. Your absence from our lives is felt daily, and believe me when I say that just because I don't cry every day doesn't mean I don't miss you on a visceral level every time I take a breath.

We see dragonflies all the time here at our new house. I like to think that you send them to us. I hope that's not just wishful thinking.

I love you, little man.

My mom and I have an interesting relationship. On the one hand, we're very close. We talk almost every day, and usually we get along well. On the other hand...well, nobody ever has the power to hurt you like your mom does.

Grant's first birthday is coming up in November. I've been planning to have his birthday party on his birthday, which falls on the day before Thanksgiving this year. I've been talking about this for a while now, and I know I've talked to Mom about it more than once before today. The only reason we'd move his party to a different day is if Jacob's work schedule doesn't cooperate. So what does Mom tell me today? "We're going to do our Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday this year, because it's the only day everyone has off". I reminded her that Grant's birthday is that day. She said that they'd work out Thanksgiving for a different day. I figured the problem was solved.

She called me back later to say "We have a problem. We always celebrate Roxanne's birthday on Thanksgiving". Roxanne is my sister, and she'll be 18 this year, but her birthday isn't until December. We usually celebrate her birthday early to avoid celebrating it too close to Christmas. Mom wanted to know if I'd be willing to combine Grant's birthday party with Roxanne's. When I didn't want to, she started to lay on the guilt.

Maybe this sounds like a petty thing to be upset about, but this isn't the first time. I'm expected to give up or share my special days (and now my son's special days, apparently), but others in the family won't do the same for me. When I got married, I'd had the date set for 6 months at least when my sister eloped (different sister) and decided to set their ceremony of blessing for the weekend following my wedding. I was (and I guess still am) really hurt by it, because it was my wedding day and I wanted to be the focus for that one day. My family was angry at me for being hurt and basically told me that I shouldn't be hurt, that it was selfish of me to be hurt for being expected to share my wedding day preparations with my sister. I sucked it up for my sister's day, but it hurt.

Grant's first birthday is a really big deal for me. It's a validation that he is going to be here for a long time to come. All of the other kids in the family have had their own birthday celebrations and haven't been expected or even asked to share theirs with someone else, so it bothers me that I'm expected to just drop my plans for Grant's first birthday or include someone else in his special day. I'm especially bothered that when I said that I really didn't want to make Grant share his birthday with his aunt, I was made to feel guilty and my mom started to make comments about Jacob, as if Jacob was the reason I didn't want to have Grant share the day.

She did apologize to me later about it, but it still bothers me.

There's a saying that I'm sure you've all heard before: "To have a child is to have your heart walk around outside your body". Those of you with kids would probably agree that it's a true statement.

What do you do when part of your heart is outside of your body and out of your reach forever?

Living without my firstborn is living with a constant ache. There is always someone missing. Always something else that should have been but never will be. The day Kenneth died, my heart was ripped into a million little pieces. Some of the pieces have come back together again, especially since we now have Grant as well, but the parts that belonged uniquely to Kenneth are still missing and will always be missing. How do you get used to living without your child?

I haven't had much choice over these past two years but to keep moving and keep living. The other option is to curl up and die, and there are too many people that need me for that to be an option. I don't understand it when I get the comments of "you're so strong". I'm not strong at all! I'm a good actress, that's all. I'm very good at pretending things are fine when really, they aren't. Two years later, and I still have days when the fact that Kenneth isn't here is like being kicked in the gut.

The thing is, at this point people expect you to have gotten back to normal. In the first days and weeks or even months after a loss, people give you a lot of slack, but two years later and you're expected to have put your grief into a little box and close the lid. In order to get through the day, I use that box, but I can't keep it closed indefinitely. He was my child, my precious little boy that I wanted to raise and hold and love, and for some obscene reason we were cheated out of that. It will always hurt to think about what might have been, what should have been.

I want my little boy back, and I can't have him. I want my family to be whole, and it will never be whole. I want so desperately to know what he would have been like as he grew up. It's so hard not to be bitter about this, even now, two years and a half years later. Bitterness is poison, and I know it is, but how do you come to the point of acceptance with this kind of a loss? How do you tell God, "Thy will be done", when His will was to rip your precious child away from you? How do I teach Grant that God loves us when I doubt it so often now?