Sunshine and Shadow

Hey Aaron,

It looks like I get a couple good days (or maybe days when I'm totally distracted) and then it hits me in the gut again that you're gone, and you're not coming back.

Today is one of "those" days. 

It probably doesn't help that I'm still sick, but whatever.  

Your van has some interest, and I'm realizing that it's the last "big" thing of yours that's here, except your love and your influence of course. Without that, without the life lessons you taught so lovingly, I don't think I could possibly go on. 

It's been seven weeks, seven weeks!! since you left. It's so hard to wrap my mind around that.  And yet time continues to march on, without you. 

I don't look for you in your room anymore, maybe because it's so empty. Your bed is gone, your wheelchair is gone, it's sooooo quiet. The rocker that Grampa made for us is still in there and sometimes I sit and rock and think of you, usually with a smile on my face.

The part I haven't figured out yet is that I don't have to be listening, or make sure someone else is if I leave the general vicinity.  Like I go into the garage, or outside, and fight the need to hurry back in. Now I can take all the time I want. I don't have to hurry home from work, from the store, or make arrangements for nursing coverage to go to things for your siblings. There are no alarms, no machines whirring. I often go by the cemetery on the way home from work. Today I drove by and the snow lay so smooth, lightly mounded as if a blanket covered you. 

We finalized your headstone and it's beautiful. But it broke me again when I sent the coordinates for your spot. How do I have a deed to a burial plot for my baby?!? 

Today Facebook reminded me of a conversation I had with Michael, 13 years ago. 

My 4 yr old just asked if Heavenly Father and Jesus listen to him when he prays for Aaron. Oh yes, my son. They do listen. And he prays for his little brother all the time.

Now 17, he's preparing his mission papers. He prayed for you his whole life. And for the first many years, he didn't ask for blessings for you; he thanked God for those blessings that he expected to be manifest.

Before you were born, he would thank Heavenly Father that his baby brother would come home healthy from the hospital. So many thought that was just a cute prayer (because after all, don't all babies come home healthy from the hospital?). It brought me to tears because what they didn't know was that he had been told you would probably die and not come home. I think a big part of your long happy life was a direct result of Michael's prayers. The two of you have such a special bond. He's the only one without any memories of not having you here. He wasn't quite four when you were born.

He has a necklace with an A on it that he wears. Yesterday a coach was teasing him and asked what it stood for, and he grinned and replied, "Aaron, for my younger brother." That brought coach up short. Now, don't get me wrong, he's an amazing man! Michael loves him. But he loves you even more.

So I guess we just keep on going, trying, breathing one breath at a time. I know there will be good days and bad days, and already they're starting to balance each other, for which I am grateful.

It certainly doesn't mean we don't love you, or miss you more than anything. I think it means... actually I don't know what it means. Maybe that we're being carried by those who still pray for us, and by the love you gave so freely.

Miss you, kiddo.

Love you so much.

“It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair

that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart.

I must let it all in.”

— Anna White