Dear Jakey,
I write to you tonight with so many thoughts in my head but mostly just sadness and missing you. Yesterday was Father’s Day and while it was a good day, it was once again shadowed (at least for me but I think for everyone) by the fact that you are gone. I could only picture last year – when Daddy had both you and Ethan (or Eth as he wants to be called now) on his lap reading cards. It is the picture we put in the slate frame. Your presence was just so deeply missed. It is always but even more on days that we should be 4 and now we are 3.
Ethan is having his last week of school. As of Friday at 11:50 he will now be a first grader. And that means you would have been a kindergartener, granted a somewhat non-traditional one but a kindergartener nonetheless. You would be finishing school too – and be finishing in room 1 and getting prepared to go across the street. Or maybe, but not entirely likely, going to Dorothy Nolan. However it would have been, it would have been a big week for you too. Both my boys would be crossing milestones. Instead, Ethan is going to first grade and we keep visiting you multiple times a day at Greenridge – and the only milestone I am waiting for now is to finally figure out if they will let us put our bench where we want it.
Last night Ethan slept in the shirt you were wearing when you died. I keep that and your Believe the Hype shirt in bed with me always. And last night Ethan wanted to sleep in our bed. We let him. I put him to bed and as he was about to fall asleep he put it on – he could wear it like a button down because it is ripped down the middle from when the EMTs were trying to save your life. I am not sure why he did other than he wants to feel close to you too. We miss you so much and I hope you know it. We went back to church for the first time in a couple of months yesterday. I felt like I needed to get back there and start doing a better job of lighting candles and stuff. Anyways, I was glad to go but it also is hard. I find myself fighting back tears when they talk about prayers and list people who passed and then leave time for you to pray for your own people. And then seeing your name on the cross as the first person that passed since they started the wall of crosses for those who died. I can’t believe you are first.
Anyways, Jakey I miss you so much. I am not the same without you. I think I am more wimpy. Things bother me that I don’t think used to and I try so hard to make meaning of things that just might not have any meaning. I love you to pieces.
Love,
Mommy