My sweet boy,
It’s like there’s always something missing now in my life. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, there’s this alarm silently going off in the back of my mind the entire time reminding me that “everyone’s not here”.
We just did our own little low key July Fourth thing today. For the past twelve of them, I have spent them on a military post. We have always gone to the carnival/festival/event that they had going on and then went to see the fireworks on post that night. We never even had to deal with traffic because in Tennessee we went through daddy’s special entrance, in Missouri we lived away from most of the other post housing developments, and in Hawaii we just got to walk through the grass to sit and watch them.
We went to Mingo Creek today and spent a decent amount of time going down the potato sack slide, you’d love it. After that, we walked across the street to the creek.
It’s crazy how much the creek reminded me of the river in Missouri. I took you guys down to the river easily over a hundred times while we were there. We skipped rocks, threw rocks, swam, played in the sand, found a soft-shelled turtle, and sometimes just sat there and stared at the water. This creek was surrounded by trees, just like the river in Missouri. Even Elijah said it reminded him of Missouri, and he was only two years old when we moved from there.
It hurt and was difficult to be in the moment. It’s so hard to have my mind watching the kids enjoy themselves, while it’s going back and forth on old memories with you in them or what I thought you’d be doing now.
A dragonfly landed on Lucas while he was in the creek. I told him it could be someone he loves letting him know they’re alright. He seemed to love that answer and asked if I thought it was you or Apollo.
The fireworks tonight were just as depressing. However, it makes me feel good to hear your siblings laughing, talking, and carrying along as if life was somewhat normal.
I love you more than anything, my baby boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.