Eight Years

 Hey Bubby, 

It's been almost eight years Lukie. Eight years since I hugged your neck, eight years since you threw yourself in my arms from across the room. Eight years since I kissed your nose and told you how much I love you.

Some days it feels like yesterday, and somedays, it seems like a lifetime ago. I remember how to breathe on most days now, the days I forget are few and far between. I still think of you every day, several times a day. You are still the first thing on my mind when I wake up, and the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep. 

There is a family I follow on social media, their three-year-old twins drowned in November.  The sister made a full recovery.  The brother, not so much.  He is alive and breathing on his own, but that's all.  He is stuck in a body that doesn't even function as a newborn.  My heart aches for his mama, with every update she posts, the optimistic and the forlorn ones. She is trying so hard to stay strong for her baby boy, chasing treatments and processes, trying to give her little boy some semblance of his former life back. I can't help but think that could have been us. I could have done the same things to you. Hoping, praying, traveling all over the country trying to find a treatment, a provider, a cure for your body and mind. I wonder if I would have had the strength to work that hard for you. Was it easier to just let you go? The more I think about it, and I think about it a lot, I think I did the right thing by letting you go. I think you fought hard my little man, you fought to come back to me, to us, but your body had had enough. It was tired and shutting down. I don't know if this little boy's mind is the same as it was, but I can't help but think you would have been miserable and wished for release instead of being stuck in a body that didn't work. As energetic and active and full of life as you were, living in a body you couldn't control would have been awful. 

I know, not I just believe, but I KNOW that you are in Heaven with your brothers, your Pappaw, and your Grandpa.  I know you are free to run, climb, chase angels, poor angels. I can't wait to see you again, to hear your squeaky voice say I love you mama.  I can't wait to hold you in my arms again Lukiepie. I miss you THIS much.