Isaiah,

A year ago today there was a lot happening at the hospital. First, both your eyes stopped dilating. They warned us that it would happen after your first one started. I think later in the day the other one stopped. They checked your eyes every few hours the entire time we were in there. Even after they stopped dilating, I asked the nurses each time to make sure there wasn’t a change. You had lost that reflex, it wasn’t coming back, but I still needed to ask.

This was also the morning when a new doctor came in. He said “hello” to daddy and then just went over and took you off the ventilator without a word. We all stood there is silence, daddy and I not understanding what he was doing. Daddy left the room because this was all a lot to watch. After about a minute, he hooked you back up and I said something along the lines of, “what does that mean?” He told me he’d explain it when he came back for rounds and he left.

This behavior caused a lot of drama and we didn’t want that doctor back in the room with you at all. It just wasn’t a necessary thing that needed to happen without an explanation. If he told us what he was going to do, we probably would have left the room and asked one of your nurses to stay in there with you. You were never left in there alone.

We got brought into a room to talk about possible organ donation. Daddy didn’t want to do it at first. Thinking about what it entails, no parent wants to think about that. I was positive that if you could have told us, you would want to donate whatever you could. Just like you were so willing to help anyone at any time, you would do this. Daddy eventually came around and we decided you’d be a donor.

This is the day they started playing with all your numbers so we could do the brain death test. Everything had to be perfect and your different things like sodium just kept going up and down. This was the point where one of the doctors wanted to get your heart tested to see if you had any odd genetic things that stuck out.

I’m three days away from getting to the point where your letters will show up in my “memories”. I don’t think I’m at the point where I want to read them, but I will probably read the first one and regret it.

I’ve got a lot on my mind and a lot of things I need to put into place. If you could, maybe you could help guide me to what I need to do.

On my run today, I saw Carson. Obviously it wasn’t Carson, but he looked just like him. He had on a red under armor shirt, sunglasses just like Carson had, and waved to me when he went by. That little wave from that random kid that I didn’t know made me smile.

I love you more than anything, my sweet boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.