Every day I think about him, in some way, shape or form. I remember little things he would say and do. I remember his laugh. Yesterday, the girls were playing outside with their friends and ‘having a picnic’ (which really means rocking out with spotify and eating junk food on the grass) and I heard my youngest daughter laugh. It sounded so much like Henry that I halted and strained to hear it again. I knew he was gone, but it didn’t change the fact that I yearned for his voice. I knew it wasn’t him, it was my daughter.
I didn’t think that they sounded very much alike when Henry was alive, but now that he is gone, I have more space to hear and compare. Henry was a very loud boy, but not in an obnoxious way. If his body wasn’t moving in full speed, his mouth was. Sometime he would even narrate what he was doing on the XBox360. He would often tell me that he wanted to be a ‘youtuber’ when he grew up. Luckily that desire subsided when I said youtubers do not make loads of money.
I miss those sounds. There is an emptiness that permeates where he used to be. He had a big presence for such a young boy. In 3 days from now it will be 3 months since he died, and I am getting used to the silence. In fact, I am actually starting to enjoy the quiet. (Oh, the horror!) But it doesn’t change the fact that the silence is now in the place of what used to reside in my biggest love. But. He is gone now.
I still think that Saturdays are the hardest day of the week for me. Saturdays used to be the day that I would lay out on my bed all the homework I had to complete for the following week and stay there until it was all finished. With my kids, we had the After 12 rule which states: After 12pm, all devices get shut off and you go outside or play with real life toys until 6pm. Henry, that clever boy, would come on my bed around 12:30pm and would attempt to nap until he could use the tv again at 6pm. He took up enough space on my bed, but not so much as to annoy me or get in my way. Oftentimes, I would close up my homework for a little bit and we would snuggle, and talk, and laugh and play for a few hours until he began to drift off to sleep. This was our day. Even though it was filled with homework, it was also filled with Henry. He was sorta like that boy who used to know the rules and found a way to modify them to his liking. Towards the last few months, he was napping a little longer than usual and I would have to wake him up to go play again. It makes my heart sad now that I spent so much time on that homework. I don’t think that I feel guilt, because I laid out my time as best as I could, so I could maximize the time I had with the kids when I was home. I guess I am only sad because he is gone and that time is over. I miss it. So much. Saturdays were the day that my love-bucket overfilled. There has been about 12 of these Saturdays now that are spent alone. Sometimes I do homework, sometimes I go shopping to quiet down the screaming silence in my brain. I have been looking for a replacement, but I have honestly found nothing. Nothing. Nothing fills the space that used to house my precious boy. Nothing comes close. I don’t expect that it will. I just hoped to fill in that space with something that doesn’t remind me of the suddenness of his death.
It is such a balancing act: seeing things that have good memories and avoiding things that bring back sad ones. Sometimes the same object will do both.
In an attempt to make good memories and having things to look forward to, I booked our family into a sorta-nearby Great Wolfe Lodge. I had originally booked a two-night stay in January, and then ran into laptop troubles. We had to cancel our trip to purchase a school necessity. I now regret that, but only slightly. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. (who’s they? No idea.) Great Wolfe Lodge had another sale, and now we are back on to visit for a couple of nights this weekend. I think that it will be a fun time and hopefully with minimal regrets.