One year ago today...straight from your mommy's heart...

...what can a grieving mommy possibly say?  What I would really like to do today is shout from the rooftop "CAN I HAVE HIM BACK NOW?!!!"  There is really no way to "talk" about how much we miss you...there is really no way to describe how much we miss you...yet the images and sounds and events of this past week, as they played out last year...well, they are still so vivid!  On the other hand, what I feel is slipping away is what it felt like to hold you...to rock you to sleep...to give you a bath...to feed you...to have you burp right in our faces after your bottle...to have you blow raspberries at us as we tried to feed you carrots or peas...

I miss this...

the indescribable JOY that you brought to your brother and sister.  You changed their lives, especially Ryan's.  He finally wrote about you in his English class this year...we have been trying to get him to write about you for the last year.  He finally wrote about you as his English teacher asked the class to write about someone they felt was special enough to be on a coin, needless to say, he wrote "my little brother Caleb should be on a coin because he changed my life".  Your brother and sister miss you dearly.  As we all do!  To experience a loss like this is just too much for this momma's heart to handle.  Your daddy and I don't know how to handle it ourselves...let alone how to help your brother and sister handle it.  We can only hold on to the fact that we will see you again.  Which leads me to always ponder what you look like now...how much has Heaven changed you?  Have you grown up or are you still my precious little boy?  Do you still smile as bright as the sun?  Do you still love to put your toes in your mouth?  You were certainly happiest here when your toes were up by your head.  Are you walking?  talking?  I hope your great-grandparents and Jesus are taking good care of you...I hope they are holding you non-stop.  I often pray that you are so loved in Heaven that you do not miss any of us one bit.  I don't want you to feel that emotion at all.  We hold enough of that emotion for you!

Not much has changed around home.  Your room has stayed pretty much the same...your sheet is still on your bed.  Your dirty clothes are still in your laundry basket.  Your clothes still hang in the closet.  Your bouncy seat, bumbo seat, car seat, etc. take up all the space on the floor.  We can't just sell these things and hope the buyer has some idea what they mean...so they sit.  I guess your little brother will be able to use some of them, but at the rate the adoption is going...he will not even be able to wear any of the clothes that I had bought for you to wear last winter.

Thank you for leading us to your little brother.  He will fill a small portion of the hole you have left in this house!  Parents cannot really prepare themselves for having a Down Syndrome child...but you made it so easy!  You were determined to show the doctors how much you could truly fight.  I wish I had the chance to take you back to them to show them just how wrong they were...maybe they would second guess themselves the next time they wanted to tell an expecting mommy that the child they were carrying would not amount to anything...you showed them!  You overcame everything in your first year like a champ.  So we hope you have passed along a little bit of this drive and determination on to your little brother in Taiwan...here's hoping he will be rocking his extra chromosome just like you did!

CALEB ANDREW - We love you and miss you to the moon and back!