One year

I remember I HAD to get home. It was an instinctive need to gather up my hard-won little family, take them home, and wrap us all up in fluffy warm blankets. I needed those three other souls next to me. I needed to feel their presence so that I would not feel the absence of others so sharply.

That strategy has worked pretty well for me. Determined not to fall into the same darkness that consumed Sam's third year, I vowed to be present for Myles' third year...Sam's eighth. Despite my record-setting ability to suffer disaster at exactly the right time to ruin birthday celebrations, I committed myself to the HERE...to my boys who deserve more than tears and emptiness.

So here I am. This is better. It's not completely healed...but it IS better.

It still hurts and the temptation is still there to scream about the unfairness of it all. But there is nothing good to come of that...no point to all that wasted effort. It is much better to hold my little family close and celebrate this life...this being alive.

I don't really know what day to observe. The 8th was the day we knew for certain it was over. The 11th is the day my body was finally forced to give up its last deadbaby hostage. Neither is really cause for observance. They're both kind of morbid if you really think about it. And honestly, I have no real interest in either day.

I do miss the dream of the Little Bug...of what might have been. Surely something like this might have destroyed me if there hadn't been little miracles intertwined with the disasters. But I can see now how the miracles have saved me. And so I owe them something more...something better. And that is what I will give them.

So I take out the memory for a brief bit. Dust it off and look at it. And then put it away like a collectible on a shelf for another year. Then I turn out the light, climb in bed, wrap the blankets around the four of us, and vow to keep the true darkness from taking over ever again.