Two Years

I wish I had the words to express how it feels to be sitting in this moment, two years removed from Logan's passing, but I don't. And that's because I'm not sure the words exist. The feeling is more of a set of musical notes, thrown together by a tone deaf composer struggling to compose a morceau. They're frantic and sad and tired and hopeful... but those words are too weak for the reality of the emotion. They're much too weak and imperfect and base. But since I can neither sing nor compose, words are what I have.

I feel old. When I think about the past several years, I realize how good I had it back in the summer of 2010. I was pregnant with Brady, and Abby and Logan and Isaac had fun playing together, splashing in the plastic baby pool in the yard and reading books and using their imaginations to become kings and queens and dogs and cats and knights and damsels in distress.

And then the mirror that showed the reflection of Heaven in my house cracked and the darkness came; it crept slowly into my heart like darkness does, enveloping me in fear and anxiety and overwhelming worry that said it's going to be bad. He's going to die and you know it. He's going to die. And I struggled to shut out the doubts and worries and to "just have faith" as well-meaning folks liked to say.

And I did my best. I get angry because I tried harder than anyone I know to rally the troops and to plead and beg for his life.

And then... February 11, 2012 came. And it all ended. And my heart, which had been on a roller coaster for a year and a half, broke in two.

Why? Why him? Why not someone else instead? Why anyone at all?

I'd like to say that it's been mended in the two years that have passed, but that would be a lie. It's still very much broken. I've gotten exceptionally good at compartmentalizing my feelings; I cry, but only when I have the time or when it won't be embarrassing or when it won't upset the other kids or cause their doe-eyes to grow yet wider with concern.

The truth is that I miss him every single day. Every single day I think about who he would be if he were here; if he hadn't been dealt such a horrible hand. I wonder what he'd be doing in school and who his friends would be. I mourn the relationships that I never got to have with the moms of the kids he never met. Every day I do those things. And I wonder how I'll get through the rest of my days missing him, though I suppose I'll get through them like I've gotten through the past 731: I'll get up and take care of his siblings and go through the motions. And I'll look for God and for signs that He's still there, even though most of the time, I don't really feel Him at all.

And I'll be positive, because though by nature I'm a glass-half-empty kind of woman, Logan was not. And the positivity that earmarked his time on this earth deserves to live on.