Calendar

Every year my sister-in-law makes an awesome photo calendar for the whole family.  Every month has fun pictures of everyone from the year before and it is always put together so well.  It is the gift I always look forward to getting.  This year was no different; yet as I paged through it, smiling bigger with each month's photos, I couldn't help but feel my heart sinking a little every time I turned the page.   And then September came around and there was my sweet Jameson's face smiling up at me from the middle of the page.  It is a great picture of him.  One that we look at often.

It made me so sad.

Everyone else changes in the calendar.  The kids grow bigger and stronger.  The grownups have new hair cuts and clothes.  I have more wrinkles and grey hairs.  We all change.  And he does not.  He will never change, never grow up, never get another hair cut or new jeans or wrinkles.  And I will never see pictures of him riding a two wheeler for the first time or getting on a school bus or playing soccer.

I look at family photos in the calendar and on the beautiful Christmas cards people mail out and think about how lucky they are that their whole family can be in one picture.  Do they realize how lucky they are to get to complain about how little Bobby ruined all the pictures by making funny faces or how not everyone ever looks at the camera at the same time?  And all I can think is that I will never ever get to have another family photo ever again.  Ever.  We are always minus one.  And every picture I ever see of my family now always has a hole in it.

He's been gone for two years now.  Two years of missing him and fighting against that damn clock that never rewinds, never goes the right way.  Two years.  My sweet little boy is gone and he is never coming back and life has moved on everywhere else except in this hole in my heart.  And I can't move on and I can't stop moving and how do you reconcile enjoying your future and embracing change and living life with this desire to just rewind and stop?  It tears at my soul.

It's been two years and we've all changed and grown.  And he isn't here.  He isn't in our daily lives.  We wake up and he doesn't live here.  There is no toothbrush for him, no plate at the table, no coat in the closet.  I don't listen for his voice in the night anymore.  I no longer expect to hear his laughter during the day.  We've learned how live without him and how can that not sting?

It's been two years since we've said goodbye.  And the ache is just as great, the loss just as heavy on our hearts.  And I still marvel at our ability to keep moving and keep breathing and keep living without him here.

Two years.  And I wonder if the loneliness and fears will ever go away for the rest of us?  Will we always be so incomplete? Will we always be the puzzle with one missing piece and all you can focus on is the hole?

Two years without my Jameson.