Twenty-One Months, Two Hours, Fourteen Minutes

  21 months. You're supposed to be 21 months old today. You should be here playing. You were supposed to be getting bumps and scrapes and into mischief with your big brother. You should be here with us saying bedtime prayers. You should have been at your big sister's piano recital tonight, clapping with everybody else. You're supposed to be in the house getting out of bed right now because you need more milk or your raggy or pluggy or something. You should be all excited about helping daddy "urk" on his stuff and getting in the way and losing tools.

  But you're not. You had to go away. I didn't want you to. None of us did. Nobody in the world wanted you to leave. Everybody prayed and prayed and you left anyway. 

  And I'm here, and I'm crying. Big, fat, painful tears that hurt my head and soak daddy's shirt. They dripped on your brother when he hugged me and asked "What wrong Mommy?" They fell on the girls when I couldn't pray tonight because I started crying remembering that I said bedtime prayer with you one time in your whole life. Now they're soaking my phone while I write to you.

  I'm sorry if I did something wrong. I didn't mean to, I didn't ever want anything to happen to another of my babies. But something did. Something bigger than both of us happened. I don't know why, I will never understand it. I don't even know if I'll ever rejoice you're gone. I don't even know if I'm supposed to. I'll leave that to the people with the platitudes who didn't love you like we did. Me, your daddy, your sisters, your brother, your aunties... None of us particularly care about what anybody THINKS we should do. We love you and we miss you and we always will.

  21 months ago you came, in 4 days it will be 21 months since you left. You had to go. I had to stay. And tonight I'm crying.