Missing the All

Two and a half years. Two and a half years since I held you in my arms. Two and a half years since I kissed that sweet little face and promised I would see you again one day. Two and a half years since I told you I was sorry for failing you as mother, since I begged and pleaded for your life to be lived with me, but alas, that fate was not ours. Ironic how two and a half years can feel like forever and the same day all at once. I think of those words often, the words I spoke to you that day. I hear myself say them. I feel the weight of you in my arms when I close my eyes. I haven't forgotten the last words I said to you. I know I never will. 

It's been a hard few weeks for me lately. I have them every now and then, especially this time of year. It's your half birthday. I know, I know. Half birthdays don't mean a lot to some people, but to me, they are huge. For me it's a landmark, a measure of another half year without you, another year your brothers are deprived of knowing you. Bonds that will never be formed.  Instead, that bond is  left to me to establish and create for you with them. But it's hard. Oh let's be honest. Hard doesn't even begin to describe it.  It's painful. It's exhausting. It's heart-wrenching. It's all the things you would think it is.  They don't know you like I do, like I did. They never saw you. They never held you. And they are too little to understand all they have lost. I, on the other hand, am not. I know full well what is lost.  You.  You, my beautiful little boy with the head full of thick, dark hair. You, with your pug nose so similar to mine when I was child. You, with all you could have been and all I will never know. You now holds such a vast definition, yet it will never be written -- a page in a book left blank, a quill with no ink.

Before you were born, I wondered how I could love you as much as your brother. And then you were here, and I understood. It just happened without me trying.  Suddenly my heart's capacity made room for you as if that space had always been there waiting for you to fill. I realized in that moment, I could love you both so much but with a different love that wasn't more or less than the other.

And then there's the guilt -- the guilt of failing you, the guilt of missing you and grieving you this much. Yes, missing you. I know that sounds bad, but it's so vastly complicated. If you had lived, your little brother would not have. That statement is simple; it's meaning is not.   I can't even begin to reconcile that idea in my mind. Whose life to give and whose to take.  I can't say one life is worth the other because it's not.  Can any parent?  I know that's why the decision was taken from me. For me there would be no decision. I would want you all here. No sacrifices. No all or nothing, just the all.

And that, along with you my little squirmy worm, is what I grieve as I approach another half birthday. The all.  I miss all that could have been, all that never will be. I miss you in my arms then. I miss you in my arms now. I miss all of you and everything a lifetime with you could be.

I just miss it...all.