My baby boy,

I miss you. I’m sure you know that, but I feel like I really need you to know that. Today was emotionally draining. I had to call three different people and explain what happened and what I needed from them. I dropped off your genetic test results at the pediatrician so they can go ahead and get your siblings tested as well. I also had therapy with a new guy today, I’m trading in the one from the hospital. He wasn’t good. Today I was asked by the new therapist something I had never thought of in all of this. He asked me if you knew you would only live for eight years, would you still have done it?”. Absolutely. Then he asked, “if you knew you would have to go through this pain again, would you do it to have had him?”. I wouldn’t think twice. You added so much to my life and taught me so much the eight years you were here. Having as much grief as I have just means I loved you that much. Because I will love you until the day I die, it looks like I’m living with this grief for the rest of my life. Hopefully in time I will cope better.

I had another uncomfortable and sad dream again last night. None of it made any sense. I was in school and making a book, but I kept thinking and telling myself, “it’s been four weeks since I lost him”. Your siblings weren’t in my dream. The sight of you wasn’t, just the clear idea of “Isaiah is gone”. I hate that in my dreams I can’t even get away from these thoughts. They just haunt me day and night. I’m told these keep coming because of how traumatic the loss of you has been. In order to try and deal with this, the trauma therapist said I need to sit down in a sacred place and write a letter to myself. This letter needs to go into as much detail as possible about the whole incident. So I need to voluntarily relive the whole horrific situation. I think I will go to Mokuleia to do it. It’s always nice and quiet over there. Plus, I have good memories from when you and I went there together.

You were fearless. I know I always told you how ridiculous you were with just climbing things, jumping off things, that kind of stuff. You were also fearless about things outside of ridiculous physical things. You decided to run track last year, even though you hated running. When we were in Missouri you always wanted to get to soccer practice late just so you would miss the warmup run around the outside of the field. Daddy and I had run track a solid thirteen years each. We both got ridiculously nervous before each race. When Ellie followed that same pattern I wasn’t surprised. You surprised me. You just ran an 800m out of nowhere because you could. Didn’t care if you had trained enough. Didn’t care if you even knew how to run it. You did it. You also had your coach let you run four events even though your age group was only allowed two races. They needed an extra relay leg? You’ll do it! I would tell daddy how in awe I was of you for how you were so willing to just jump in to do things and trust yourself. I don’t think you actually ever said you couldn’t do anything. If things were difficult, you definitely got frustrated. I would have to tell you to walk away and take a second, but you would either take half a second or no time at all and then go back determined to do it.

This is just a random memory, but it just came into my mind and I want to make sure I remember it. I started having contractions with Lucas before he was supposed to come. I panicked and the next day we went to buy our mini van so we could get all of you home once he was born. In the car ride back home after we bought the van, you were in awe. You couldn’t see out the window before in the car. You could see everything outside the window of the van! Daddy and I would smile at you because every time we looked back at you in the mirror, your eyes were fixated on the world outside.

I hope to have a dream of you tonight. If it doesn’t include you alive and well, I don’t want it. The dreams of you already gone or me fixated on the fact that you aren’t there..no thanks. I love you more than anything, buddy. I’m listening to the Foo Fighters song. You are our hero.