Your Birthday

Today is your 20th birthday. I had thought of all the advice I wanted to give you. Imagined you alive with me in the early morning as I walked along your favorite beach. I imagined how I would share with you all the things that interested me as I turned 20. When I turned 20 you were almost a year old. Would you have saved your young marriage? Would you be getting divorced? Would you have worked out the issues in the Army and carried on with a career, or would you be back home, working a job, pursuing your music? What would you have been at 20? I would give almost anything to see that. I would give almost anything to have you alive. 

I thought there would be more emotion on this day. I was dreading the overwhelm of grief. And I found that if I am to experience that level of grief, I have to manufacture it myself. Almost three months after your death and the grief is no longer an unstoppable wave, but a burned out hollow of numbness in the place of my love for my oldest living son.  I can work myself into a horrible state thinking about how you died, but it's not that way on it's own anymore. I have to concentrate really hard on how I'll never see you again, the damage done by your loss, or a million other things that are horrible. As much as every fiber of my being would bend time and space itself to help you, I cannot do impossible things. And there are people who need my help who are still alive. So the only thing I can do is remember the good things. Because we cannot resolve the disagreements we were in the middle of when you passed. 

Is there some branch of the multiverse out there where you lived on?  I hope so. I hope there's some version of reality where you beat your demons and lived life the way you wanted without the weight of them dragging you down. I hope there's a version of me and you out out hiking or fishing today.

What actions could I have taken that would have gotten me there instead of mourning you? It's easy to second guess ourselves, but the truth is that I did the best for you that I could with the tools available to me. I loved you before I saw you, and I will love you until the thing I am dissipates into nothingness. 

Happy Birthday, I love you.  

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