Some Things Cannot Be Fixed

Happy 12th birthday, my dear Louie!

Twelve years is a long time to live without you.  You’d be well into adolescence now - awkward middle school dances, probably not telling me much of what’s going on in your inner world, maybe even taller than me.  I suspect being a parent to a 12 year old boy may have been quite hard.  As always with my birthday letters, it’s hard to imagine that life now - to picture only my ideas rather than our reality. 

This year, the reality of life around me has felt heavier. Maybe midlife is just hard.  Friends have lost loved ones to tragic deaths, gone through divorces, struggling with difficult relationships with children, lost job, and the world around me seems to be filled with instability. And with most hard things, I often try to process it as quickly as possible - to be “ok”, to help, to get past the hard part, to make meaning. 

But lately, what I’ve come to appreciate is there’s nothing to get past. Sometimes grief (which is simply love) needs the space and air to simply be hurt, without expected progress. 

I’ve been reading a book called It’s OK that you're not OK by Megan Devine. A quote that stood out to me is this: 

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

This year I look around our family life, and from the outside, we look ok. In fact, maybe even more than ok.  I remember in the early days how desperately people wanted me to be ok - like the depth of my sadness was too uncomfortable to witness. 

But how I feel today is that I will never be ok that you are not here.  

I will never be ok that our family is “all girls”. 

I will never be ok with your death, no matter what beauty may come from those ashes.

And I’m just going to leave it at that. To let the longing for you remain. To let my sadness for you remain.  To let my annoyance with the need for closure remain. 

That’s what my love feels like right now. 

I miss you every day, my love.  Happy birthday, my forever baby.