Isaiah baby,

It’s been six weeks since we have heard your voice. It’s been five weeks since we kissed you, held you, brushed our fingers through your hair, and just got to stare at our beautiful son. Usually in high school they start to ask you, “where do you see yourself in five years/ten years?”. I will be honest, my life has never for a second gone the way I thought it would. Everything has come as a surprise, some bigger than others. I never had a “plan” for what I thought you’d do with your life. My main goal is always that you guys are happy and doing what you want to do. I’m not sure, but I feel like you may have attempted soccer in middle school and high school. You probably would have been on the honor roll because of just how intelligent you were. Let’s be honest, you were supposed to be the one helping Ellie with math when she gets into high school. The one path we thought you might take was something in engineering or even architecture. You loved how things worked, building things, and just inventing special things to do random things. You were 4’10” when you passed, so I was thinking you would be over six foot when you grew up. I had told you I wanted you to be tall enough to hug me the way daddy hugs Abuela. Maybe you’d get married? Maybe you’d have kids? I don’t know, I never really thought into the future. The only thing I really know is who and what you were in the present. I remember when we were visiting Gma before we moved to Hawaii, I was at Ava’s game and saw a bunch of high school baseball players finishing practice. You were six at the time and I could not fathom you turning into “that” in just ten short years. Unfortunately, I’m never going to see that.

I went to the beach today with your brothers. It’s been their first time back to the ocean since May 31st. Lucas was worried and asked if the same thing that happened to you would happen to him. I tried to explain that the beach wasn’t what caused anything, it would have happened no matter where we were. Of course we then had to run through the thousand other possibilities of where you could have been when this happened. We just went and sat there, I didn’t want to go in or anything. They surprisingly lasted longer than usual, which we both know isn’t long at all. It was nice though. They set up a dinosaur obstacle course at one point that had them sticking random sticks into the sand and jumping over them to the ocean. It’s definitely something you would have done, but you would have upped the ante a little bit. Probably slid onto the boogie board at the end into the water? Run out as far as you could till you fell? When we were walking back to the car, Lucas said “At least Isaiah got to come to the beach with us” because I had my necklace on with your ashes. I love that he says stuff like that. We will always include you.

I clutched my necklace last night while we watched the fireworks. I kept trying to stay in the present moment even though my mind kept wandering off to thinking about how much you would have enjoyed them. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful they were, while my life seemed far from it. My life is still beautiful. I am still lucky in the grand scheme of things. I’m just a little damaged now. I can’t describe it, but it’s like a piece of me is gone forever. There’s just this hole where you used to be. My identity has changed, my life has changed trajectory drastically, and I’m just going day by day trying to figure this out.

Yesterday at a picnic I was sitting next to a mom who I never met. She asked me if I had kids playing there and I told her that I had two on the slide and one at home being bored. What about you though?! You are my kid. I want to include you. Even just saying a little thing like “My eight year old just passed, but he would have loved this” would have made me feel better. Instead I said nothing. I felt as though I completely betrayed you. I felt as though I just abandoned you. I didn’t want to make this stranger feel uncomfortable though. I want to talk about you to everyone when I’m talking about my kids. You are one of my kids. I just finished a book about grieving after the loss of a child. It says that you shouldn’t worry about making people uncomfortable. I doubt she would have said anything. She probably just would have said “oh, I’m sorry” and moved on. I made myself uncomfortable by leaving you out of the conversation. This is something that needs talked about more. Nobody wants to hear about it because it’s way too depressing. Nobody wants to hear about it because they don’t even want to have to think for a second how that would feel. I talk about you freely with everyone who knew you, just not strangers. I promise, for you I will figure this out. You are part of this family and will always be regardless of it’s here on Earth or just your spirit.

I have yet to say that you have passed away using the d-word. I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s either that you “passed away” or when “everything happened”. I can’t get myself to use it. It seems so final. So abrupt. I don’t want that for you. I want you to keep living on with me, just in a different way.

Ellie was telling the story today about when you and her asked daddy if you could decorate the car back in Missouri. Daddy thought you meant a hot wheels car so he agreed. Nope. That’s not at all what you meant. Instead, you guys decided to take Elmer’s glue and glue actual flower petals to our mini van. That left some kind of film on the hood that I can never get off. You’ve had a lot of incidents with the van, I guess. You also lost your hot wheels garbage truck inside of it. We were dropping Ellie off at preschool in Waynesville. I was getting baby Lucas out of the car while you decided to drive your garbage truck on the front grill of the van. You definitely dropped it into the grill and that’s where it stayed for the next few years until we got it back after the van needed to be fixed. I had to call pap and make sure it wouldn’t break the van and was no big deal. It wasn’t.

Baby I feel like I always have so much to say to you. Lately I’ve been standing in your doorway just staring around at random things in your room. Ellie asked today if when we move, will you have a room? I’ve dreaded that thought. I wouldn’t be able to go into your room and just take a breath. I wouldn’t be able to go into your room and just look at the clothes in the closet and remember certain things we were doing when you wore each shirt. I would no longer be able to just stare in and still see you sitting on the floor building your legos. I love you so much and don’t know how this family will continue without you. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This wasn’t supposed to happen. If I could, I would take your place in a second.