Christmas 2013

     Christmas morning has come. The presents have all been opened. The bubbas have been entertained all morning with Legos and Angry Birds and video games. All the preparation of the last month. All the worry that it would all be just so. That everyone got at least one thing they really wanted. All of it over in minutes.

      As I sit here sipping my coffee, listening to the sounds of four little boys as they work together to put together their Legos, I know I am blessed. Yet there is also this feeling that someone is missing. Always. His absence is felt. The boys and their sissy were talking about Sterling last night. How old he would be now. What they thought he would be like. What toys they thought he would like. And their voices always drift off. It hurts.

      This is our third Christmas without Sterling physically here. We only had one with him and he was only two months old. He still slept most of his day. He was mesmerized by the Christmas tree lights and the music. But he was too little to open presents and understand Santa and Jesus. I look through the pictures of that Christmas and I see five happy, smiling faces. They were all so little and the world was still a safe, happy place.

     December 2011 changed all that. Our entire family learned in an instant that life can be scary and unpredictable. That Christmas just 22 days after Sterling died was such a blur. I read somewhere its called God's anesthetic. Because if we had felt the magnitude of our loss and pain immediately we surely would not have survived. It has come off in small doses over the course of the last two years.

     I wonder if that is why this third Christmas hurts so much more? I wonder if its because he would be three now and would be completely "getting" it all this year? I wonder if its because his bubbas are getting older and realizing more and more what they lost, what our family lost? I have no idea. I just wish more then anything that we had another Christmas with Sterling.

     The bubbas and I decided this year that we would buy a gift or two that we thought Sterling would like and donate it to the PICU where Sterling spent the last two days of his life. Then the stomach flu hit us last week and then an ice storm so we weren't able to take them but we will in the next few days. Its a tradition that brings us some joy.  It also allows us to share Sterling's memory while giving back to the hospital that has done so much for us during some of our darkest moments.

      I also want to wish all of you out there in blogland a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you so much for reading my ramblings we heal and find hope along the way.