My baby boy,

Time without you is going both fast and slow at the same time. Ellie asked me about a picture the other day and mentioned how she thought she was nine years old in it. I told her, “no, that picture is from right before we lost Isaiah”. She looked at me and replied with, “yeah, so I was nine years old”.

Ellie just turned twelve. How in the world was she nine in that picture right before everything happened? It seems like no time has passed, yet I’ve been living in this nightmare the majority of my life.

I went back and looked at the pictures from Ellie’s birthday and the only pictures I took were of her and her cake. I also took a video of her opening her gifts, but that was it. I don’t like looking at things and seeing memories that were made “after you”.

You’d be proud of Elijah, he’s reading BOB books on his own. I know they’re not the most compelling stories and actually don’t even make sense in the beginning, but Elijah felt good about himself. You spent a lot of your time reading stories to him, I’m sure you would have helped him read these. You were the big brother that was always there to take care of your younger brothers.

You had such an amazing heart at such a young age, I was really looking forward to seeing the type of man you were going to grow into. I’m going to get more depressing in my writing, so I’m going to end this letter. I just hope you do know how incredibly proud I was of you for the person you were. I love you more than anything, baby boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.