My baby boy,

Merry Christmas Eve Eve. I still don’t know what we are going to do for the holiday. Daddy suggested that we don’t do a big Christmas dinner. At first, I didn’t like the idea. I thought we needed to do the usual dinner with the ham and three or four different sides. However, the more I sat in the idea today I decided to agree with daddy on this one. For Christmas dinner, we are going to get pizza or Chinese food. It’ll take the stress off of me thinking I need to make the perfect dinner, while battling with being upset about missing you. Maybe it’ll just be a “this year” thing, but I need to just throw up the white flag for a few things and I think Christmas dinner is a good one.

At the Memorial Tree Lighting, there was another military family there for their son. They saw daddy’s uniform and tracked him down. Today I went to get coffee with the mom. In my thirty-nine years of life, I’ve never gotten coffee with someone. It’s most likely because I didn’t drink coffee until a year and a half ago, but still. I asked the barista for “Christmas in a cup” and she looked at me a little weird. I don’t know enough about coffee drinks to not get something off the menu, but I wanted to feel festive. She made me something with pumpkin, peppermint, cinnamon, and something else. I know, it sounds gross, but it was good.

I talked to this mom for about four and a half hours. She also lost a son. Her son was Luke and she also has an Isaiah. It’s like they were meant to see our family there. We just talked about life and our journey through losing a child. It was when I was talking to her about our holiday plans that I realized we don’t need to do the big dinner. We talked about how we are no longer afraid of death. We talked about how death is a normal subject now in our houses and how we want to do something to honor you and help people who will also have to navigate through losing a child. It’s nice to just talk to someone and easily say, “it just freaking sucks” and they just agree.

I feel like the next two days will be pure survival. I need to go in with no expectations and realize that whatever happens, happens and however we celebrate, it’s enough.

My sweet boy, you would have gotten a bunch of Lego sets and Minecraft things for Christmas. I wish your excited face would be waking me up Christmas morning. I wish I could hear yourself bossing everyone around tomorrow night and telling everyone that they need to get to bed. I’m just hoping the days seem to go by faster, rather than dragging on. I’m sadly in a hurry to get through this first Christmas without you as fast as I can.

I love you so much, my baby. Please keep an eye on us this next few days. We are going to need all the extra strength we can get. Goodnight and sweet dreams, baby.