Five years

Five years. It's been five years, baby boy. Five years since you fought for your life and lost. Five years since I last looked into your eyes. Five years since you took your last breath and your little heart stopped beating. It's been five years since my world came crashing down. Five years of working my way through this life without you. Five years of living with that empty space in my heart, in my soul, in my being.

How has it been five years? How have I continued to breath and my heart continued to beat without you here every single day for five years? I truly cannot fathom how we have made it through. How we continued living on without you. In those early days I just really didn't think it was possible. I look at your brothers and think I wouldn't be able to go on, to survive, without them here. But I've done it for five years without you. And I will continue to do it for the rest of my life. How? I don't know. I just do. We just do one day at a time. And each day turns into the next and we live.

We live and we do find joy. We have plenty of joy. Joy of your memories. Joy of being your momma. Joy of loving you. Loving your daddy. And those brothers, oh those sweet brothers of yours. So much joy. But baby, so much heartache as well. Our lives are entwined with the heartache of not having you here. Often times it cannot be separated from the joy. There are still days though, days like today, that the heartache and the grief reign. The world seems joyless. I feel an emptiness inside of me.

We will get through though. We will survive today, this fifth anniversary of your death. We always do. And the joy and hope will balance out the grief and heartache once again.

But for today, I cry. I cry for each one of the days of the last five years without you. I cry for each one of the days of the next five years to come without you. And the days after that. For each day of the rest of my life that I live without you, my firstborn son.