If they asked me to describe you, I would start with your eyes. I never got to see your eyes, just your long eyelashes. If they asked about your first word, I would have to shrug. Though statistically, (ironically,) it’s almost always “dada”. If they asked about my hopes for you, I would have to say my biggest hope was that you would have felt loved. It was always important to me that you feel loved.
~
This past year has been different; your absence has been deeper. I’m realizing more and more what it means that you are physically gone. I can go whole days, sometimes, and find that I’ve “forgotten” you. But you live so deep inside my world, everything I am is part of you.
You have a younger sister now. She is beautiful and brings me joy. I wish so much that you could be alive to see her grow. I wish so much that you could be alive to take your own first steps, toddling in cute outfits I still look at in the stores.
I think about these things we’ve missed, these forks in other roads. I think about the life that lives on only in my mind. If they asked me to describe you, I would start with your eyes. At once both real and ambiguous, unknowable outside of mine.
I love you, little man. You will always live in every part of me.
Happy Second Birthday, and many more to come ❤️
Love, -Mama
