A decade--And your Golden Birthday

3,653 days. It's been 3,653 days since I last saw your face in person, Luke. 

It's weird--When I was looking up that calculation, I thought it might be more. It feels like more. When I really sit and think about everything that has happened in our lives since that day, it feels like a LOT. Your funeral. The hours and days and weeks and months that dragged on after you died--when we didn't have a clue what the future would hold for us. Helena died not long after you. Then we were pregnant again. Lena arrived. We sold the condo. Moved to another. Bought our house, Lainey came along. First days of school happened. A pandemic. So many more people have come and gone. 

Time seemed to pass so slowly at first--the grief, always waiting there, foaming to the top of everything. 

At first, I had no idea how I would get through my life without you. How this gaping hole in my heart and soul would ever change or feel different. In those first years of birthdays, I put so much pressure on myself--To make sure you were celebrated--That we had a special cake or balloons or went somewhere special. 

I think now, the grief is settled. I know I don't need to do anything specifically to prove that I still love you, or that you were real. Not a single day goes by that I don't think of you or speak of you. You're never far from my consciousness, and while there are definitely times where I see a sign of you, I think the thing that I've come to accept the most, ten years out, is that you're everywhere with me. I literally carry you in my heart. And I hope somehow you feel that.

I guess that's how we carry the losses that mean the most to us over time. I remember someone I spoke with in the first months after you died...told me that his mom and dad had a baby before him--Just like you. And how he grew up his entire life, knowing he had a brother--before him, who he never met. His mom spoke of him, and my friend always felt him there, somehow. I think about that so much more often now, with the girls. Lena is much more in touch with her thoughts about your existence than Lainey is. I can tell that she feels a connection--maybe it's her wish for a brother. But she always includes you. You're her other sibling who she never knew, but wishes so much that she did. 

This year, I don't think I'm as sad. I mean, I'm always sad about you and about how we lost you. The sadness is just...maybe not as acute. It used to feel that I had to take your birthday and just...get through. Do something alone--and then find the thing I needed to do to celebrate you. But for the first time, I don't think the debilitating sadness has set in. Tomorrow, we'll go to the baby jacaranda tree we had planted at our local park, have some cake, and the kids will inevitably be crazy. 

And I'll think about how at this time, ten years ago, hardly any of this existed. Life has moved forward, so far in time, without you. And yet your mark is on everything. So much of my Now is imprinted with everything that happened because of you, and for that, I'm forever grateful. You made me a mom. Your face is forever etched into my mind. And even though I don't have nearly as many words to say about you as I did ten years ago, I still feel that longing for you. Who you would have turned out to be. I wish we had a chance to make memories together, on the outside. 

For now, I'll take the relief that I feel being ten years away from the Hardest Thing--leaving you there in the hospital, seeing your face for the last time. 

I hope I get a sign from you, tomorrow, sweet boy. I'll be looking for it.