Max's 3rd Birthday in heaven

We've just celebrated Max's 3rd birthday in heaven and I'm moving in my grief journey....moving on, moving forward, parallel... who knows, but I'm moving.
The last few months has been better in many ways, but also more difficult in others. As I find myself embracing the growth and progress of the other two, even being able to let go a bit, embrace that they do get to enjoy life and trying to let go enough to let them.... to not bubble wrap them... I also find myself seeing Max in other children. I knew so many babies born that same year, right around the time he was... I never used to let myself compare them, I was always reminding myself that he would have been very sick if he'd lived and couldn't have lived so there was no point in going there.... but I can't seem to stop myself now...
Maybe it's because when the grief was just too raw I couldn't even let myself think that, but now that it's mellowed, more bittersweet and not always so intense.... I see him in those kids and sometimes my heart lurches into my throat....and I let myself wonder, daydream really about how a sweet little boy like that might fit into the hole in our family....
Anyways, it's three years since I held him... Smelled his sweet head and kissed his soft cheeks.... and I still think of him everyday, always...I'm pretty sure I will still feel like this, even fifty years from now.
Happy Birthday my sweet boy!

Three little monkeys.... a post I was working on a while ago

It's been a long time since I've written anything. I've been really busy, but also changing...moving along in my grief journey. 
Some days I'm not sure how to live this life, this 'normal' life that I'm supposed to have. To most people it must look like a picture perfect, white picket fence kind of life. And I feel like I'm supposed to live up to that somehow, I'm supposed to be happy, satisfied....the picture of joy and wonder. Why wouldn't I be, after all, we have the perfect family...a boy and a girl. The list could go on about what is just right with my life, but if I wanted to list what isn't just right about my life I could make an equally long list. Mostly I try to focus on what I have to be happy about and mostly I am so very happy. Sometimes though, sometimes I can't help but think about what I'm missing, who I'm missing and how our family is missing him. I wonder how life would be with three kids, I wonder how they all would interact and play together. I want so badly to have that...to have three little monkeys giggling on the floor together.
My husband is always quick to remind me that we wouldn't have gone on to have Madeline if Maxwell would have lived and I know this, I know that we probably never would have had all three of them.... but I did, I did give birth to three beautiful babies and I did hold each of them. And I wanted to raise all three of them, I want to know what our life would have been like in this parallel universe. I want it all.