Somehow, Life Continues

Amazingly and somewhat cruelly, life has gone on these past 2+ weeks since we lost our son Elliott. At times, I'm thankful for that, and other times, I wish we could hit pause long enough to catch up, and then keep things going. I have had all kinds of anxiety over today coming -- last Friday was Elliott's official "due date" and I was anxiously trying to anticipate what kind of feelings I would have that day versus the other painful days we had been living through until then. Friday was also my Dad's 63rd birthday, and I'm hopeful that it will only be associated with that celebration in the years to come, and not the day my baby was supposed to be here. What babies are born on their due dates anyway? And Elliott was delivered in November, so why would a day in December be especially hard? I can only wait it out and see.

There were tears of sadness and anger -- sadness from losing our son, the same ache and devastation as we've been feeling since the doctor confirmed Elliott's heart was no longer beating, and anger at this happening to us -- good people, good parents -- that had already made plans for Owen's and Elliott's future as best friends and partners in mischief. I mourn the loss of Owen's brother almost as much as the loss of my son. Sure, we can probably have more kids in the future, but no one will replace Elliott, and certainly not in this stage of our lives. Owen may have a brother, or a sister, or a couple of each or both...I don't pretend to know what our family may look like in the future, especially after our "plans" were clearly not up to us with Elliott.

But I didn't come on to write about my pain and anger. I wanted to take advantage of life going on, to talk about Owen and how he has grown and changed in the past month. When we left him in his highchair eating dinner and watching TV on that terrible Saturday, neither of us realized we were about to leave him for three nights. The longest we have ever left him before that was around 2 hours to go see a movie, and he was finishing a nap for half of that. That day, we took off, without being able to call him (he doesn't quite understand the back and forth of the phone yet) and without seeing him at all. He was in great hands and it sounds like he had a blast, but I was so worried every nap time and bed time. He puts up a fight for us when we lay down with him, even with bear hugs and kisses and the right number of stuffed toys surrounding him. How was anyone going to be able to put him down? But he slept and ate and played and enjoyed the extra attention. And he was so excited when we came home. He gave us a tour of the upstairs -- "Closet! Music! Fan! Window!"

He has also picked up some new phrases that I love:

- "Where's hammer? Where'd it go? Somewhere I find it. There is he! 'S'right there! I get..." This same series of thoughts happens for any lost object -- his water, a garbage truck, our cat, a sound.
- "Watch this!"
- "I nape's Owen!" (My name's Owen)
- "Thank you...Welcome" (after sharing his food with us)
- "What's that sound? That sound's airplane!" (or cat, or Mommy, or...)
- "'K'out window!" ("Look out window" when anyone leaves our house)
- "Do again!" (which is hard in real life without TV)
- "Get back here!" and "Come back here!" when he's chasing our cat or a friend
- Some Christmas words - "Kiss-mas," "Santa Caus," "Snow"

Owen's attention span is also getting longer, and he can sit and play with his trains or trucks or read books for a good amount of time. He's also getting bored more easily lately, which is hard for us to keep up with, especially in the winter weather. It's cold and wet, and dark so early, that it's hard to come up with things to do where he can run off some energy and be mentally stimulated too. That's our challenge for this winter -- keeping Owen entertained and happy, no matter how tired, sad, mad, etc we are. It'll help us all. (12/14/10)