August 8, 2013
My Sweet Isabella,
This month, and the months to follow are to be filled with wedding arrangements. That's right. Your daddy and I are finally saying "I do". It's been a long time coming, I know, but I figure I'd rather look back and say I wished I'd done it sooner, than look back divorced and say "I wished I hadn't done it at all". This past month has found you on my mind more deeply than you usually are. I've come to the point in my life post you that I can usually think of you without being swallowed by the grief that used to consume the everyday of my life. These days though, the thought of you finds big, heavy tears pooling in my eyes, and a smile that is fake, at best. I miss you! Is that still normal to feel so strongly after all this time? Your little brother is getting so big, which I'm sure you know. There's not a doubt in my mind that you watch him, that you look over him, that the very reason I get to kiss him each night is because YOU were on his team. He'll be five months old in just 6 days, it's hard to believe that, when it feels like just yesterday I was praying, willing him to come out! I'm sure you remember that too.
Being a mother to Owen sometimes makes me feel guilty, like I am taking something from you. Do you feel forgotten? Does Daddy still talk to you like I do? I think you of you each day, and look for opportunities to include you in our lives. Do you supposed you'd be in our wedding somehow? Ah but how? How can I include you without making you a spectacle? How can I honor your memory, and convey how much I wish you were here without making it about you. Its not...and i know that, but you should be there. YOU SHOULD BE THERE. And yet, you're not. And I have Owen James, my little lizard, the thing about me that makes me feel like I might be able to function again. If I could love him, all of him, the way I never got the opportunity to love you, then i could be better. Is that fair to him? Does that mean that in some way, I view him as a replacement for that which i lost in you? Sometimes I just don't know.
I wish you could know him. Oh boy, is he something else! I'm literally so in love with that little boy that it makes it hard to breathe sometimes. I imagine, i think the worst...i wonder what my life would be like if you hadn't taken care of him. What if something had gone wrong? What if that labor had been different? What if instead of the danger to my life, there had been a danger to his? I'd gladly take all the pain and suffering in the world that he might be okay, that he might have the life I could never give to you. Bells, his smile lights up a room. He crinkles his nose in the same way that your dad does when he thinks something is funny, but he does it every time he smiles. Can you believe that? I imagine that he looks like you...how you'd look now, anyways. My opinion of your looks has changed a bit though, based on the image I see in front of me as he grows before my eyes. Do you have my deep brown eyes like your brother does? Do the pierce the soul like his? Are they big and vulnerable, asking for love? His eyes amaze me. Do you have that fire red hair he had? Boy, his hair was blinding at times, it was so red. SO SO much like your dad.
The end of the year is upon us again. This means a lot of things for me. There's a lot to celebrate, especially this year. There's Jason's birthday in September, and then the wedding, my birthday, and logans birthday in October. We also remember you, in October. We remember you in a big way. Then we get through thanksgiving, and christmas, and before you know it, it's your birthday again. I'll bet you are the most beautiful 3 year old. I'd do anything to see your face again. Do you grow up there in heaven? Do you learn? Are you talking well? Your brother is, finallly. Logan is making more sentences that you can understand, although I still feel as though we will have to take him through speech therapy. We shall see though.
Well sweetheart, I guess I'll wrap it up for today. I love you, I miss you, and as ever, I am thinking of you. If only Heaven weren't so far away.
Love You Bigger Than The Moon,
Mommy
