Last Year...

Dear Aaron,

I'm sitting at lunch and just have to write.

Snow stuck to the grass for the first time today, and the swirly flakes and the cold somehow reminded me so much of you.

 We bundled you up so well! Hat, gloves, jackets, blanket poncho and of course the fleece-lined minion stroller sack one of your bus drivers made. Plus heated stuffies and rice sacks. You were toasty!!

Fourteen years ago today you went in for your first surgery. You got a g-tube and nissen and were off to the races. We found out you needed a trach, that somehow, inexplicably, you were managing to breathe through airways so collapsed that your doctor was shocked you were able to move air at all.  And yet, you did. 

My last picture with you before you left.

I had forgotten that this was the day, and yet, I hadn't. I woke with a headache and a total lack of desire to get out of bed. And that carried over into my morning preparations. It was only when Facebook reminded me that it put it all together. 

And November brings Thanksgiving, which is a wonderful holiday, and also the day that each year I pled with heaven to spare you for just one more Christmas. Every year that is, except last year. Last year you were freshly home from your longest hospital stay and we thought we had a good plan. Last year I didn't take a picture of you in front the Christmas tree because things were just so busy and the week after Christmas would be so much more relaxed. Last year I didn't even consider that things would change. 

 Last year they did.   

December 23, 2023. I decided it was time
to stop putting off pictures.

And now we have this year. Or I have this year. You're not here. We're coming to the end of a year that never knew you, and I don't know how to "do" this year. 

I mean, I guess I'll figure it out. It's not like it's going to stop or go away. 

But sometimes, sometimes I wish time would stop. Sunday afternoon, I laid down on the daybed in my office, and when I woke, for a brief second, I saw your room the way it was a year ago, with you there, and was surprised all over again to blink and watch it change. The piano instead of your bed, the couch instead of your armoire, silence instead of your machines. 

I'm so thankful for you, really, honestly and truly. And again, given the choice of having to learn to live without you or having never known you, I would choose this pain every single time.

But still, it hurts...

Miss you so much. 

Love you even more.

Love,
Mama

Time is the only thief we can't get justice against.

~Terri Guillemets