On Your 10 Month Milestone

This month, little one, you visited me in a dream. It’s worth noting because you haven’t done that in a very long time. Not since you first went away.
 
My mind must lack some creativity in your absence because even in my dreams I can’t seem to imagine you living. What you would be like. Instead, I walked the streets with you in my arms the way you were when you were born. Without breath in your lungs. Without a beat in your heart. But I was so proud of you. We were walking together and I was getting more and more excited and anxious to show you off wherever we were going.
 
Your body would stir. A feeling unfamiliar to me, but regardless of how you moved and wiggled against me, I still knew you were not alive.
 
I woke up with two really profound feelings.
 
One, that feeling of being so proud of you. It’s that same feeling that brings me to write so freely and openly about you. I want the world to know you exist. I want the world to see how beautifully you’ve changed me and helped me to grow. I want the world to know you like I know you and if that means writing about you every day for the rest of my days then I will.
 
The second feeling is one that’s more fleeting. One I haven’t felt since I got home from the hospital with empty arms. And that is the physical ache of arms that long to hold a baby they can’t. I’m not sure it’s something I can describe, or even if it’s something that can be believed by those without the experience, but there is a real and true ache your arms get when your baby dies. It’s not a pain, really. But this sense of missing. Of uselessness. I remember coming home and feeling like I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Probably like how a musician would feel on stage without an instrument they’ve grown used to playing. In those early days I could so clearly remember the weight of you in my arms. The feel of your little head snuggled against my chest. Too quickly, those memories faded without any way for me to bring them back. I couldn’t pick you up to remind myself. It was just gone. And then I woke from that dream of carrying you proudly through the streets, and I could remember. It was the most bittersweet kind of remembering. I spent that whole day feeling the weight of you in the crook of my elbow. My arms feeling restless for a full 24 hours. Missing you.
 
I do miss you.
Not just today, on this day that marks 10 months without you. But every day.
You are thought of and missed and remembered and cherished every single day of the last 304 days.
 
I love you always and forever.
Happy 10 Months, Sweet Boy.