For Samuel

For My Baby, My Beautiful Cutie,  My Little Nutty.

 

I miss...

I miss you all playing together.  I miss being a mom to four kids.  I cannot believe how much Kaysha, Daniel and Anna have grown since this video.  You, however, seem frozen in time.  I wish I could have frozen time when you were here but it was bound and determined to move forward to a place where you were no longer in it.  Six birthdays have now passed that we were not able to celebrate with you.  You would be ten today.  You barely got to be six.

Oh, I miss this so much!  So much!  No one can do this.  Anna forgot how to slide down the stairs like this.  Everyone walks now.  Or runs.  Or jumps.  And occasionally when they think I am not looking, they slide down in boxes, laundry baskets or sleeping bags.....right into the washer.  Then I hear them and it's all over.  But no one slides down the stairs on their tummy quick as lightening.  I miss this so so much.

And this.  Your swimming lessons.  I miss watching you learn.  I miss your excitement.  Anna watched this with great delight.  She took swimming lessons in the same pool.  Jumped off the same edge.  I see you looking to see if I am looking after you entered the water.  You know I was always looking.  You always had my eye and my heart and soul.  How do I live without you?  It is often so hard to believe it is possible.

  I miss you just playing as if nothing was ever wrong.  As if nothing ever happened.  I miss you on the swings.  No one enjoyed them like you.  This is the first time I have shared this video of our family.  It is the day after the day we found out you'd relapsed.  It is video taken as if it could be the last.  Video of you enjoying life in the midst of death knocking at the door.  I tried to keep from sobbing at times on this day.  It was just so hard to imagine you would not grow up here.   I miss the "googies."  No one can do that either.  You had your talents, that is for sure.  You made your own language for sheer joy and it is recorded here.  Of course, in this video, we had to remind you to do it so that it was forever captured, but when you were most happy, it just came out spontaneously.  It was a baby thing that you carried until death.  We loved it.  I miss it.

I miss holding your hand.  I miss taking you places and you taking me places.  I still feel naked when I leave the house without you.  Even after all this time.

I miss the songs you sang. The songs you sang and everyone could not help but sing along with you. No one sings now, even still. You used to sing in the van wherever we drove, you had a song. Song may still play when we drive along, but they are not yours.

I watch this and feel like you had to have known your life would be short. "Life is but a dream..." for what was so often, a nightmare. You always found the bright side. That nightmare is but a dream to you now. I am glad for that. Yet, as long as I live on this side of eternity, it will be with the knowledge that your birthday was also the day that two years later your first chemo cast the die that lead to your death. That was and is no dream for us. It was a nightmare of unimaginable pain. Pain that we still can hardly comprehend we endured and survived. Your love and our love for you was more powerful than pain, and even now, more powerful than death. 

.

Your love raining down on us from Heaven is the only way we can live. 

I miss your hugs and affection.  While I know you are only a thought away, my arms still ache to hold you. My ears throb because they don't hear you speak.  My eyes leak when I look back on our lives since you left and think of all the joys we have missed out on because you are not with us. 

But.....

I wouldn't trade this pain of separation for the missed opportunity of being your Mama.   Ever.  Ten years ago today, my life changed for the better because you came into it and I give thanks to God that you are my son and that I am your mother. 

Eternally.

But until then, I miss you.   I wish I was with you.  I wish we were all with you.  We all love you and cannot wait to be with you again, in the flesh.

Mama