Dear Jakey,
I started this letter to you on Sunday with the intentions of writing an optimistic and positive letter. I got about 3 lines in and I quit. And tonight I erased them. It just feels entirely inauthentic to write about being thankful at this time of year. As each day passes and we get closer to the inevitable date of December 8th, I find myself on edge and to be honest, anything but thankful. Our awesome Thanksgiving seems like a million years ago, even though it was less than a week ago. The balloons, the parade, dos caminos, thanksgiving dinner, Sarena, getting our tree, decorating, shopping with Kir and all that was amazing truly seems like it as the other end of a tunnel that separates me from real life. I am in a bubble at the end of the tunnel now and the bubble sucks. It is the bubble that reminds me how awful it was when you died. And how much it sucks that you were taken from me, on a random Wednesday night, after Ethan’s TKD class right here in our living room. I hate the memories of that day and those that followed and I hate this time of year. And I have so little left to give. But in a somewhat pathetic effort to keep it together I keep trying to give thanks for what I can in my life: for you, for knowing you and for being your mom. Because time will never take that away. And I am thankful for smaller, stupider things. Like the fact that TKD moved locations and I never have to sit in the seat that I sat in when I spoke to Ace’s mom about you that night, never knowing that 2 hours later you would be dead. And I am eternally thankful for your brother and his spirit which I know you have a lot to do with. I miss you buddy, more than you could ever imagine, more than I can even grasp.
Love,
Mommy