Happy Birthday, Jamyn!

Today you’d be turning 3. You’ve been gone longer now than you lived. And yet we’re still picking up the pieces of our shattered hearts and lives. We miss you. Those last few months and weeks before you left us, I’d hold you close and try to soak you in so I’d never forget. I wanted to remember just how you looked, with your rounded forehead, flat nose, greenish eyes and funny ears. I’d stroke and stroke your curly hair and hold your cute rocker bottom feet with the toe that stuck up, and kiss your little hands with the extra short fingers. Somedays now when I’m especially missing you I can almost still feel your weight in my arms and feel your soft curly hair between my fingers. I miss hearing your little squeaks and grunts.

Teagan started kindergarten yesterday. I’m left alone in an empty house. You should be with me, keeping me company.  We think sometimes how different life would be if you’d been born healthy. I’d have a busy noisy 3 year boy keeping me hopping the next 3 years before you scooted off to school. We don’t often think of that tho. What we really miss is the you we knew, with all your imperfections. 

What we really miss is the feed pump humming, the oxygen condenser whooshing. We miss the mixing of specialty formula, and changing feed bags, and g-tubes. We miss pulling up those meds and pushing them through your line. We even miss the constant vigilance it took to make sure we never ran out of feed bags and formula, and med port adapters and meds. We miss keeping a close eye on the nurses in the hospital that they didn’t throw away one of those precious med port adapters. Insurance only allowed us 3 a month, and for some reason they easily disappeared! And no, the hospitals did not keep them in stock. Several months after you died I pulled out a suitcase to pack for a trip and found an adapter in a pocket. I left it there. 

We miss the contact with your doctors and nurses. We talked to them on the phone more than our family sometimes. 

If you were with us still, I’d be busy with therapy appointments, doctor appointments, the next In home EEG. I’d have been stressed out how to get Teagan a first day of school dress sewed with all the care you took. I’m sure there’d have been offers from my dear friends, but I’d have wanted to do that myself for her, somehow. Now  I easily got several sewed. 

If you were here we’d have stressed out that the cold snap we just went through would hurt your compromised lungs, and taken turns staying home with you during revivals. We’d be really efficient at dealing with your specialty stroller and car seat. 

We feel cheated that we never got to see them, that we never got to put that handicapped plate on our vehicle.

But now, even tho the bottled up love wants to leak out of my eyes and down my cheeks, we are so happy that you are healed, in Heaven, with Jesus. But we still miss you. Happy Birthday, darling....