Another Saturday

Another Saturday without my son. When will I stop counting the days since he left us? It's torture, and yet I just can't stop doing it. Every sunrise is a sunrise without him and every evening marks the end of another day that he wasn't here with us. He would have been 9 weeks and three days old today. I don't even know what a 9-week old would be doing.

I've still never even changed a diaper.

I'm trying so hard to be happy -- to count the many, many blessings I have -- but it's so hard sometimes. I think I'm fine and then "BLAM" -- a sneak attack. Like last night at the video store; We were hunting for a movie and suddenly I was engulfed by a raggedy looking gang of pre-teen boys. They looked like hooligans in the making -- scraggly long hair, ill-fitting clothes and that "up to no good" gleam in most of their eyes. And I almost started to cry. All I could think was, "Thomas will never be that old. He'll never be wandering aimlessly through a video store trying to decide whether to get a funny or scary movie with his friends on a rainy Friday night in May."

I wanted to hug those boys -- those probably smelly, unkempt, silly boys. The dark, curly-haired fellow seemed to be the one trying to keep the rest in line and focused, continuously asking the group, "So, what are we getting? Are we getting a funny movie or a scary one?" He also chastised one boy for spending all his money (presumably renting the video was going to be a group effort). In the end the rag-tag band left the store without anything to watch. Who knows what they were going to get up to -- or in to -- after leaving Blockbuster.

Boys. I had one too. Mine is wearing a lacy, light green sweater and bonnet his Grandma knitted for him and a ducky sleeper his Auntie bought for him. He's resting with his Great-grandparents in a cemetery not far from my old home with a Thomas the Tank Engine toy from Daddy and a tiny cross that says "God Bless Baby" from Mommy.

Oh God this is so wrong. Why isn't my boy going to have the chance to wander around a video store with his friends, snickering at video covers with pretty girls on them and searching his pockets for loose change to add to the pot? Why didn't he have the chance to grow up? Why? Why did our boy die?

Blessings -- I have so many blessings. But once upon a time I had one of the sweetest blessing of all.