Dear Aiden,
I'm in disbelief that it's October 10th already. Shocked that the world keeps spinning and the sun keeps rising and I am still here. Without you. Remember a few years ago when Drew sang the O-O-O-October song? We have been singing it all month. He has turned into the smartest and funniest kid, I know you would be proud of him. And Abby is on the swim team this year and doing so amazing! How I wish you were here to see them growing up...it's happening ever so slowly but then all at once. Drew will be 9 in a few weeks, and it's hard to believe he had only just turned 7 when you left us. The Mains are going to Disney this week, they leave tomorrow, and staying at the Wilderness Lodge just like we did. And then they are getting a puppy! You are missing so much, I hate it.
I always have this idea what I am going to start blogging and poetry will flow out of me, words like gifts flying off the keyboard keys faster than I even realize. But of course that's never how it happens. I think of things to write in the shower or in the car or making my coffee and then they vanish, as fast as they came, into the vast chasm of my mind where lately nothing is rememberable, is that even a word? Your dad and I keep saying we wonder if this is what dementia feels like, where you know you should remember something specific but you just don't because the word isn't there in your brain or on the tip of your tongue, it's nowhere in fact. Just like you.
Today is World Mental Health Day. The irony. Yesterday was my and your dad's 18 year wedding anniversary. 18 years...I was supposed to be 43 with a 17 year old and a 15 year old. Not one dead 15 year old and one alive 15 year old. No no no, it was never supposed to be like THIS. This. This fucking sucks, quite frankly. Your sister got her braces off yesterday and all I could remember was not getting a braces off picture of you because I didn't go with you, your dad did, and you probably wouldn't have let me take one anyway. But I don't have that picture, I don't have that memory, and sometimes I worry that the memories I do have are starting to slip away like grains of sand through my fingers. I try to remember the sound of your voice and it's lost in the wind. If I had to guess how many hours I spend thinking about you...well, it's all the ones where I am awake, which is most of them.
Missing you never gets easier. 657 days since I have heard your voice, seen your face. I am so so so sorry. I am sorry every second of every minute of every day since Dec. 22, 2021. I never ever should have left you in that room alone. I will never forgive myself for that, not ever.
