Sully's stocking

We've been pulling Christmas decorations out of the attic and slowly putting them in place both in and outside the house. It's nice to go ahead and get them up and then our finishing touch will be next weekend, the first weekend of December as it seems to be our tradition now, we'll go pick out our tree. As I went through decorations and lights, I came upon our stockings. I found them back when we just had Ella and not knowing if we'd have two or three children I went ahead and bought five so in case we ever did have a third we'd have all the same "genre" of stocking. And so I look at this last stocking I have and wonder to whom it belongs. It' bright red with crisp knitted snowflakes and three cheery snowmen - the distinct quantity of three always being what made it the third child's stocking. I just hold it in my hands for a moment, so soft, so colorful, and a world of possibilities race through my head. What if we do decide to have another child after Sully? Should this last stocking be reserved for him or her? I try and picture another little person or even being pregnant again - images flicker and fly away - nothing I can hold onto with any certainty. But even if that does happen, that child would not be our third but rather the fourth - no matching stocking then. Sully is our third child. That is his place. And so I picture putting it up for Sully this year and every year after this in memory of him and that makes the tears come. It almost seems too much and I tell God that. To miss him for the rest of my life, to cry when I hang stockings every year from here on out, to see his little shadow, as Brad says, always chasing behind Ella and Zane. I put the stocking down and walk away. I decide to wait until next weekend and the tree to put up stockings. But, I do believe that bright red stocking is Sully's and will always be...