My sweet boy,

I’ve thanked you twice today, but just in case you didn’t hear me, I figured I would tell you again. I’m not sure if you being in my dream last night was a “visit” from you or not, but I loved seeing you. It’s funny I made a comment about how you don’t have to cut your hair up there when I was just talking about running my fingers through your hair the other day. I wish the dream could have lasted longer, but neither of your brothers slept last night and one of them woke me up in the middle of talking to you in that dream.

Lucas has always been the very “matter of fact” one regarding you. We had to drive to Five Below today after school and work to get these ridiculous dumpling squishies that smell like gasoline. While we were walking out of the garage, Lucas made a comment about how we needed to buy four of them so everyone gets one. Then he just laughs at himself and he said, “oh my gosh, I forgot Isaiah is dead”. It’s jarring for me to hear, but maybe that’s my own problem.

I was thinking I need to change my wording when I hand out things to people from you for holidays and just randomly. Yesterday I started out telling the one woman how I “lost my eight year old son” and she starts looking around me asking if I lost you there in the mall. It’s not the first time it’s happened and certainly won’t be the last. When you say “lost a child”, I think the majority will think that a child has wandered away and needs to be found. I just cannot get myself to say “died” and anything about you in the same sentence. In all the grieving groups I’ve been to, they say how important it is to say what it actually is and what happened, but I can’t even do it myself. Your siblings have no issue, so there’s the silver lining.

This next few months is really going to test me in so many ways. I need to start going through your brothers’ closets and drawers and changing out the sizes. I’ve been putting it off because updating Lucas’ clothes means I need to go through the ones you had in your closet at the end. Lucas could already wear many of the shirts, but I haven’t had the strength to pull them out and go through them yet. It’ll be quite jarring to see Lucas in some of the last clothing you got to wear.

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