My sweet boy,

Happy Thanksgiving Eve. We had our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving tonight with our chips, jellybeans, and pretzel sticks, but I didn’t take any pictures. I used to take a picture every year of all of you guys at the table, but it’s too hard.

Our Thanksgiving plans got derailed because of the van. It’s leaking oil and wouldn’t be able to make the drive to Abuela’s, which was a disappointment. It’s our second Thanksgiving without you, but it’ll be the first with us on our own. It’ll be the first year since 2013 that I don’t have to make the entire Thanksgiving meal just for our house. I wanted to be away for this first one.

Since I wasn’t planning on being home, I had to go to the grocery store today. Every single grocery store over today was most likely extremely busy, so I decided to go to the commissary on the Air Force base. Since it’s a reserves base, it’s mostly just retirees and I figured they would have already been done shopping. I was right and there was only a handful of people there, it was wonderful.

Just being at the commissary was making me sad, but it wasn’t until I got to the Christmas candy that I lost it. Aunt Cait had Lucas and Elijah and Ellie was with Gma, so I took the opportunity of being alone to get some of the candy that the elves start to bring each day in December. Like last year, I bought four of everything. The elves will bring you your candy each morning and before Christmas Eve we will distribute your candy to random people and kids.

I was picking out the candies and just started crying knowing we are about to have to do this tradition another time without you. You loved it and would get so excited each morning to see what they brought you.

I was walking around the commissary with tears just running from my eyes. This isn’t the first time I’ve cried in public and certainly won’t be the last. Since losing you, my emotions are out of my control and I can’t stop what I’m doing when they come up. I walked around the store while listening to some music, when an older man stopped me. He said, “are you going to spend the rest of the day being grumpy, or are you going to smile?”

I kind of just looked at the man and just said, “I’m crying because I lost my eight year old son and I miss him”. I was so mad that this man even stopped me to call me grumpy because I was crying. I was annoyed because, what the heck? Well he asked to pray for me, said his stuff, and I showed him a picture of you. He asked what happened, I explained it, and went about my way shopping.

I got more upset about everything as I walked away because that’s just where I was at that point. I called daddy and pap because I still couldn’t believe what happened. I just wanted to get out of the commissary and call it.

I went to self-checkout because it’s me and I will just bag my own groceries instead of spending an extra ten dollars for the workers to bag them. While I was at the register, the older man who came up and told me to smile, paid for my groceries. I told him that he didn’t need to, but he insisted. I thanked him, went to the car, and cried some more.

A random act of kindness came out of that really unfortunate situation. I do hope that he has learned not to just tell random people not to be grumpy and smile, though. Hopefully that’s a lesson he carries with him. It’s the old saying of “you never know what someone else is going through”.

I only got enough things for the first week of December, so I’m going to need to finish the shopping at some point next week when your siblings are all in school. I want to finish the rest of it all in one shopping trip because it’s emotionally draining.

I love you more than anything, my baby boy. You mean the world to me. Goodnight and sweet dreams.