2012 seems like a lifetime ago, when I sit down and think about it. It was the last year I went to Coachella. The last full year we lived in our condo. We've moved twice since then. And of course we've had two girls, and now they're in first grade and preppy-k. The school years have begun for them. Eight years ago, Jeff and I had just begun our journey into parenthood--With no idea what was in store for us.
Lately, I've been feeling that I live my life with a neverending sense of heartache, just below the surface. And I'm not sure if the current events of the world would feel as heavy if we'd never lost you, Luke. Maybe I'd still have that sense of invincibility I had when I was just 33 and had never had kids before. Things were simple then.
Everything feels heavy now. The world seems like it's swirling everyone around in an intense washing machine filled with nothing but heartache. When COVID-19 first hit California back in March, when our world first shut down, I felt that impending sense of doom hard. I think that once death comes for you on a deeply personal level like it did with us, you're reprogrammed to understand and acknowledge that fear fully and without question.
I carried death, and I witnessed and held my own child, dead.
So I do have a healthy respect for death. It's not something that just happens to other people for me--It's mine. It's caused me and Jeff permanent heartache. So while I've spent the last eight years carrying it with me, learning how to operate my life differently and find joy and happiness where I can, I still feel it close, always.
For those first few months of shutdown, I felt that doom hard. I felt like every step I took outside of my home and people might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I knew I had to respect what this disease does to people with diabetes or blood pressure issues, since they're problems we live with at home.
And so I've felt a super-acute heartache since this all started, and I guess it hasn't really stopped. Seeing people devalue actual human lives lately has crushed a lot of my own spirit. This year, on your birthday, Luke, I feel numb. My heart hurts. And maybe it's just because there's so much loss happening for so many people right now--I don't really know. But I know that when I see others hurting, I tend to absorb it. It's sort of what I do. It's not great for me, personally, but I guess it's my way of helping others find the light out of this heartache. I've done it. I've somehow survived eight years without my firstborn son. A lot of times I feel like I'm built for this. I can endure and I can officially take steps to keep going because I've done it before.
And yet...it's still hard. Even when you're a pro, even when you know how it goes. Even when you're accustomed to death being at your door or inside your house--It doesn't get easy. Maybe the expectations do. But when I sit down and take a deep hard look at our pictures from our day in the hospital with you, Luke, my heart still hurts. It always will. And I can keep going and endure that heartache and be a mom to these beautiful, crazy girls (even if I have no idea what I'm doing on a near-hourly basis) but still miss you like crazy.
The heartache of missing out on what you would have been will always exist in that hole you left in my own heart. That's the reason this never ends. Love lost is heartache. And some love is deeper than others.
I'll always wonder who you would have been and I'll always have cookies or cake or something to celebrate our brutiful life. Just wish you could ever have been here to celebrate it with us.
