Peanut In A Pumpkin Patch

Peanut -

Two years ago, Momma joyfully posted a series of photos on Facebook titled, "But Peanuts Don't Belong In A Pumpkin Patch!"  The series featured a VERY unhappy Connor, dressed in a Halloween onesie and pumpkin hat, sitting on bales of hay, surrounded by pumpkins.  You are not smiling, or even frowning, in any of the pictures.  You are flat out crying.  I remember the owner of this pumpkin display laughing with us as we tried to snap even one "good" photo.  Eventually we gave up, resigned to the fact that the hay + pumpkins + hat = one unhappy Peanut.  Later, as I looked at the pictures I cracked up, thinking about sharing these pictures with future girlfriends and friends...maybe even showing them at your wedding and to your own future children.

See, Peanut?  That's what make this loss, this grief, so incredibly complicated.  My arms ache for the presence of you every moment of every day.  I long to touch your hair, feel your hands, give you a kiss.  But, there is so much more.  I want to know what you would be doing TODAY.  And tomorrow.  And 10 years from now.  I want to see you get on a school bus.  I want to watch you play sports.  I want to know what kind of music you would like, and friends you would surround yourself with, and what subjects in school would interest you.  I want to watch you grow up.  I want to see the mark you would have made in this world.  Because, it would have been amazing.

I look at the pictures of you crying in that silly pumpkin hat and I remember...all I saw that day was the future.  Now, I look at those same pictures and all I see is what we lost.  Present and future.  It's so big.  So messy.  So indescribable.  So overwhelming when I try to put a box around it.  I believe, if allowed, it could drown Momma.

Peanut, I wish we were taking you to a pumpkin patch today, in this beautiful 70+ degree weather.  I imagine watching you run around the pumpkins, picking the perfect ones to carry home to carve and decorate.  We would take a ton of pictures that once again I would share with our friends on Facebook.  And life would be perfect.

I guess my imagination will simply have to do.

Missing you desperately.  Loving you immensely.  To the moon and back.

- Momma