The Void

   The depression settles like a thick fog.  It is stronger than just sadness, sadness over what is lost, stronger than my need to breath.  If I stop concentrating, I forget how to breath.  

  I can still hear your squeaky seven year old voice saying, "I love you mama!"  I can still smell the scent of your hair fresh from a bath with Elmo bath tablets and your favorite blueberry shampoo.  I can still feel you sitting in my lap as you make yourself small and tiny in my arms.  I can still feel how heavy and long you were the last time I held you in my arms.  So different from just a few days before when you were bouncing with life and eager to go on the weekend trip that would cost you your life.

   In six days, we will remember you on your 14th birthday.  Seven years after you turned seven and seven years after you left us.  After you were needlessly taken from us. 

  If I could turn back time, I would keep you home that weekend.  I would have called off work and spent the weekend at the pool, taking you and your brother and sister to the park, to the splash pad, making your spaghetti to eat and giving your Reece cups and pretzel hotdogs from Sonic.

  I can't imagine what my world would be like if you were still here baby boy.  How life would be different for your brother and sister.  How much hurt and pain could have been avoided.  What would you look like?  Would your voice have gotten deeper?  Would you still eat spaghetti out of the colander while I was finishing the sauce?

  There aren't enough words to break through this fog, that has settled down around me, sapping my energy, my will to live. I will keep breathing though. But I don't know why.