Milestone Birthday

5 years ago today we said a very brief hello and goodbye. The 22 weeks we spent with Max can never make up for the lifetime we feel like we missed out on. 

This year especially, is a milestone birthday. 5 is a big number! I find myself seeing ads for Secret Life of Pets 2 and wonder if that might be a movie he begged me to go see--considering he shares a name with the main pup!

I watch the little soccer and Tball games and wonder what sports he would have loved. Sometimes the hardest is to wonder where he would fit into the boysquad. 

Would he have been loud and boisterous like Teddy? Flying down the neighborhood with his bike and spending hours outside

Would he played quietly for hours like Parker building legos, coloring and creating with an amazing imagination?

Would he be sensitive and silly like Jack?

I'll be honest, milestone birthday's suck more than others. I can almost feel and see what he would be doing but yet I can't.

I ordered a birthday cake for him, like I do every year, and was asked what I wanted for flavor and design. Internally put off, I thought to myself, "How would I know!? My 5 year old could've told me by now." We reached an age this year of not just guessing interests and favorites but an age of understanding them and cultivating them. Max could tell me this year the type of cake he wanted, who he was going to invite and what he wanted to do.

The sting of parenting a child who isn't here is the wonder and frustration that everything you think "might've been" is just a guess. The disappointment of never hearing his voice, never seeing what eye color he had, or hearing his first word is hard, but it grows too. It becomes bigger. Not only did I not know these things when he was born, the whole future ahead is just a guess too. 

I want to say that my heart doesn't ache as much or my grief isn't as heavily triggered anymore, but that's really not true. This year, I envision a squirrely 5 year old more than ever. I'm more mad this year than just sad. My daily life has returned to normal, but the hard thing about grief as time goes on is the willingness and opportunity to talk about it diminishes little by little for me. Yet the weight of our experience remains the same.

However, God has worked through others in amazing ways to show us love. Some lovely people in our lives check on us each and every year, some people do acts of kindness on behalf of their love for our family and Max, and most of all this day brings our family quite close. We get a small cake, sing Happy Birthday and blow out some candles for such a special little boy.

So, here we are, 5 years later. Somethings better, most things just the same. I'm glad I'm still writing on this page, I'm glad I have taken time every year to reflect on my journey with Max. It's not easy to talk about it, but I always feel better once I do.

To my little boy who made me the mom of 3, I miss you so terribly, I wish you were here everyday.