missing

i miss touching him. i felt the same way with ezekiel. my arms feel empty. and cassidy is so kind about letting me hold her and kiss her. she gives the tightest squeezes when she hugs, but her three year old body is so different from his. i miss his long skinny arms and knobby knees. i miss his gigantic feet. i miss his blue eyes. i miss his spikey buzz cut hair. i miss the wax in his ears. i miss cutting his fast-growing nails. i miss his bloody noses and boogers. i miss his mile-long eyelashes. i miss his belly sticking out after a big meal. i miss his muscley legs. i miss his sweet cheeks and big lips. i miss his belly button, a little bit of an outy. i really miss brushing his teeth. and even here cass has been so kind; she used to brush her teeth on her own while i brushed wyatt's. now she lets me brush her teeth if i ask her.

so much is missing. the house is quieter, tidier, more boring. no lego ships, no swords, no apple cores sitting around anymore. it feels so empty.

thank you

Mornings are filled with pain. When I wake up before Cassidy I lay in bed and think about Wyatt. I think about how he would come in our room in the morning and ask me (or Tom) to get up and get breakfast. Sometimes, if my arm was hanging out of the blanket he would kiss the palm of my hand and then rest his cheek in my hand. I suppose it's because I told him it was a lot easier to get up in the morning with a kiss than with a whine.

I can still feel those cheeks.

Yesterday I helped Cass change her clothes for bed. She was standing up and I was sitting down and as I leaned over to pull her underwear off of her little feet she leaned over and kissed my head. It was so reminiscent of Wyatt and his tender ways. While Cass is more outwardly affectionate, Wyatt took advantage of little opportunities to show genuine love.

He would thank people for the littlest gift with such appreciation. My sister Sarah pointed it out, he would say, "Thank you, Aunt Sarah." The tone of his voice, the sincerity in his words, the light in his eyes, he felt real gratitude.

It reminds me of a line from a poem I wrote in high school: Those who are thankful are never thankless. It's so redundant, so obvious. Reading it now I see how young I was in my writing, but it's true. Wyatt was as excited about his Buzz Lightyear underwear as he was about his giant bow and arrow launcher. The picture of him with Tom from his little booklet shows such a huge smile. You can see the package of underwear opened in front of him. That was before he opened the gun with the bullets and scope and bow and arrow launcher.

He appreciated so many things, the mundane things and the extraordinary things. He was so grateful that the words "Thank you" were never far from his lips. At such a hard time in our lives I'm seeing the importance of being thankful for the big and the little things. Sometimes it's really hard, but I'm trying.