Monday, February 18, 2008

There's Nothing Left to Do

Well it's been a year. His first birthday was January 30th. We had a party for him at Bear Creek. Rebecca made a wonderful white cake with almond, cream cheese icing and we wrote "Happy Birthday William" on it. We took presents and balloons and let the balloons go. It was surreal having our own little party with no guest of honor. We left some of the presents there with him and brought some back to pass along.

The last couple weeks have been really hard. It has been a year so pretty much all of the "firsts" have happened, first birthday, first steps, etc. Rebecca and I have been talking and we're ready to sort of move on. We feel like a year of the hard crying is enough. It's a hard balance, we'll never forget, but we also don't want to be stuck in 2007 forever. But the last couple weeks that seems harder than ever to do. No sooner than we get this great idea, it seems impossible.

The week leading up to his birthday I cried every time I was in the car driving to or from work. I should be going home to see him, but he's not there. He would be so much fun now, but he's not here. For some reason the last couple weeks it just seems like the hole left by his absence seems enormous.

During the funeral and for the first couple weeks afterwards there was a lot to do. We had a lot of family in town. We were busy taking care of Rebecca after the surgery. We got to see family we hadn't seen in a long time. Along with the trauma we had a lot of fun and really good times as well. We've done all the big tasks, we set his head stone, had his first Christmas. We went from counting by days to weeks to months and now to years. Now, everyone's gone home, there's nothing left to do but be sad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I, too, thought passing the one year mark would sort of magically improve things. Sitting at my desk on William's birthday, I found myself thinking about picking up a one-year-old out of the crib first thing in the morning. They usually have a very soggy diaper with maybe a little run over on the pajamas. Perhaps new diapers have cured all of that. But, anyway, it made me very sad to think you or Rebecca were not going in to pick up that bundle of tee-tee.

And just when I think we can at last be done with that "hard crying," the tears come again. Years ago when I was struggling, Aunt Imogene would tell me, "This too shall pass." I suppose if there is a season for everything, this is true. I continue to trust and believe we will yet rejoice.