I miss him

This is Isaac on the night we met him.

I miss my boy.  I miss the way he snuggled in close to sleep.  I miss the way he grinned with his whole mouth open.  I miss the way he was just starting to vocalize with us.  I miss the way he neatly book-ended my little family.  I miss the way he felt immediately like part of us.

Of course he doesn't look this way any more.  He's two now (I'll never forget his birthday -- 1/11/11). And April 1st of this year will mark two years since he was taken from us.  I still sometimes hope it was just a cruel joke. He's a big boy -- probably with no memory of all the memories he made here.  

I've never had to bury a child.  I have no real understanding of the finality of that horror.  But I have lost my son.  I've had to grieve, alone in the middle of the night, the ache of empty arms.  People say I should be happy for him (and in my mind I guess I am); he was reunited with his biological family.  Sometimes my heart struggles though, because we were his family when no one else wanted to be.  At the strangest times I find myself thinking about him, wondering what he's doing, what he's like.  "They" said it would get easier with time.  I suppose it did -- I don't have to wonder every second how I'm going to breathe again.  But the grief itself isn't less, isn't easier.  It's not constant; no, now it hits in waves, unexpectedly and without warning, ruining me for a time. There are people in my life who say I need to get over it, pull myself up by the boot straps and move on, it's over.  I'm not sure how to do that. I'm not even sure I want to do that. 

There's no real lesson here.  No clever way to end this post.  But if this is to really be any sort of memoir of me, then this needs to be here.