Dear Muppet,
This week brought a close to another year without your dad. It's so hard to even wrap my head around the idea that he's been gone for two years. There are days it seems as if I am still waiting for the one year marker to cross across my calendar and others where I feel like he's been gone for years. I guess it's just depends on where my mind seems to rest on that day.
Ethan I wish could expound from my heart how this was not the life that your dad and I had planned for you. We wanted you to have the most wonderful childhood filled with a sense of wonderment and joy, and there are days that I feel as though I/we have failed you. As your mom, I want to fill your life with the most enriching things and yet as a single parent I find myself getting wrapped up in the schedule of life. Trying to find that balance of when I can push dinner off for 30 minutes so we can play trains or skipping the one extra bedtime story because it's too late. Sometimes that balance eats at my soul and I think you will be grown before I know it and that I have missed out on so much of your life because there was only one of me.
But it's in those moments when I check in on you at night and take in your loving little smile that seems to never leave your face or those tender little sighs that you are content in your wonderland of dreams - I admire you muppet. Yes, I your mother, not only proud of you, but admire you. In your short little life you have done more than most people could have done for me and your dad in the last four years.
You gave your dad motivation to fight his cancer with the vigor of a thousand armies and yet reminded him how gentle he was. You were buddies, friends, and he loved you Ethan more than any set of words I can lay down here. He lived life to the fullest because you brought the best out in him. You reached into his soul and helped his fire burn a little brighter and made his fight a little stronger. The photo you and your dad "bump'n" honestly expresses the relationship you two had and it makes my heart break that you now have spent more time without him than with him. But I also have faith that our loss is in a way set to mold you or both us for something later in life. God's plan if you will.
Ethan, my little bug, my muppet, you amaze me daily. Through your yearn for learning or how, in the strangest of ways, you do the little things that remind me that you are a collaboration of love from your dad and I. Looking at you at times brings me back to him and the way he made me laugh.
You are such a wonderful child Ethan. You are kind and gentle. Caring and loving. You are one of the most compassionate children I know - you don't like to see people hurt and your the first one to help them when they are. When I cry, I love the way you curl up in my lap and hold my face and tell me everything is "gonna be ok - ok." You are so much like your dad. Ethan you are a light that resides in my soul and continues to burn and grow with everything you do. You steal my heart and take my breathe away when you yell and yet whisper "I love you".
You're everything to my everything. It warms my heart to feel your little hand reach out for mine and give it a little squeeze when we walk across the school parking lot and I do everything in my power not to burst into tears of joy when we race to the car in the afternoon and you turn back to see who's winning with that laugh that resides in your belly. My heart sings when your voice echos my name and you gave me the purpose and drive when I needed it the most. You help me find my way back to sanity when I feel as though I have none and even when I don't know what to do when I get there I just enjoy sitting there in your wonderland of imagination and creativity.
Yesterday we went to the fair and seeing you break out of your shell and share with the world your personality almost brought me to tears. You rocked those pictures and they will mean more to me than any other photo that ordains my walls. They are you - the budding artist, avid musician, the free sprit that encompasses my life and the lives of those around us. People can't help but look into your loving little eyes and get lost in your little laugh and the faces that make every one smile from the inside out.
I love you muppet more than you will ever know and I will never stop reminding you how much you mean to me. I know as you get older it will be "un-cool" to hang with your mom or snuggle up in my lap. But I will always be there by your side, admiring how much you have grown and how much you're daddy would have been proud of you.
Love you always,
mum
No comments:
Post a Comment