Three years later

Tomorrow marks Sully's third birthday. I stopped at his playground tonight on my way home from rehearsal. I let my hand brush over the rosemary that shot up over his sign, "sully's playground". I breathed in deeply that pungent scent and placed a kiss on my fingers and then on the little etched bird. Rosemary for remembrance. I remember you baby boy. I can feel the weeping mother opening up the door and walking through my heart, my emotions, my memory. I sat on the bench and sobbed.

Everyone has pain. Everyone has some ache that their heart hides. But why this ache in my life? Why a dead child? I still am asking that, three years later.

Tomorrow we are taking a reprieve from the world. Brad is off work, the kids will not have school. We aren't planning on interacting with anyone, just us, just a day to be together as a family and celebrate and mourn our Sully. We've planned eating and cake making, family presents, board games and movies. We'll look through his pictures and watch our home films. We'll take balloons to the playground and play together there. We want to go to Edmarc and touch his name plate placed there with so many other children who left broken hearted families. We are not alone in our grief.

I was once told that we are what we celebrate, that our children learn from what we celebrate. I want to celebrate my boy. I want my other children to remember that we celebrated his life every year. Maybe, as we all grow older and eventually live apart, his birthday will always be a reason for us to gather back together again. I would like that. So, even if it is through tears, I've put up my Sully flag and I've made hearts bloom out of all our windows. I will hold my little ones a bit tighter and breath a deep breath. I want to embrace and celebrate all that Sully taught me, embrace the beauty of the smallest of lives, the joy and pain of six days, of being in the moment and no where else. I love you, Sully, my forever Valentine.