Dear Jakey,

I wonder what it is like on your end. I talk and talk and talk to you all day long in my head. And I feel like you hear but I wonder what it is like for you. I have been struggling on some sort of almost existential level with death. I can’t stop thinking about it and am sometimes all consumed by it. We passed 19 months without you and I struggle more now than ever before. The permanence of death is impossible and truth be told not a concept I can readily grasp. I can’t move past that I won’t hold you here on Earth again. I just can’t get over it. And last week I struggled so much at night – dreams of death and darkness would wake me and scare me enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep. For no particular reason and maybe just sheer exhaustion, this week has been better. But the thing of it is that it reminded me so much of life with you. I can’t keep track of how many nights I would lie awake with you on my arm watching you – often times awake or twitching or seizing or whatever – and in the dark it all was pretty much intolerable. But then at some point, day would come and nothing was quite as bad in the light of day. So I use these times to remember my time with you. And I try to remember that in the light of day everything is able to be tackled – even when it seems impossible.

I struggle with the whole cycle of grief too. I struggle that it all seems so predictable. I read other blogs from moms that lost kids – some as recently as last week. And while some of it should be comforting because it is so similar to how I felt, it actually upsets me. I hate that we all feel the same and that in actuality the way I felt and the thoughts I had when I lost you are more or less the same as others feel. I just don’t know how to process such loss and grief in the world. And I still don’t know how to process the loss of you.

I miss you so much – your smell, your skin, your smirk and all of you.

Mommy