Inches

Measure me Dad...mark it on the wall!

Luke has grown an inch and a half...Ben has shot up two...all in four months.  I hardly thought this possible, but there it is on our wall.  I actually ache thinking of all the inches she has missed...all the inches yet to come.

They've changed these past months...moved farther from who they were when she was here.  I can't stop time, but I'm so scared to watch them grow...to witness us slowly distance ourselves from the life we shared with Susan.

Someday I'll look at a picture and think, "That's how she knew them" and it will be the past...my past...their past...but her present.

They will become teenagers...adults...maybe start families.  She won't experience a drop of that happiness.  For me it will always be bittersweet...and totally incomplete.

So many have suggested the boys will bring me joy over the years to come.  They surely will, but it will be a damaged pleasure...not the bliss it should have been.

The fruition of having children is sharing who they become...seeing together how they grow. Alone...I will be full of pride...and alone I will face all their struggles.  There is no one to take part in the enjoyment...there is no one with whom to divide the load... at least not in the way parents do...in the way parents care...in the way two parents  are meant to share.

Lately I think of myself as a child of seven or four.  What if this had happened to me?  All those memories I'd lose of times with my mother...of hugs and kisses...of looks and words that only a mother could share. Where would I be without those moments?  Where will they be without theirs?

Inches seem so small, but happen far too quick.  My boys are growing right before me, but away from what we were...a family...of four.

I can see their Mom slipping through their minds like sand in an hourglass.  Slowly she is fading...then suddenly a memory springs and their hourglass is flipped.  But just as quickly she begins to slide away again.  Never truly gone, but surely less real.

Even I struggle with remembering she was real.  The love of my life has become a memory...an image...a voice.  Without her touch and caress...she has become a picture...a video...an answering machine message.  How can this be the result of twelve years of true love?

We struggle in this house to hold her near.  But how...with what?  With photos and words...memories and traditions?  That just isn't enough to fill the absence of her love.

I pray that as my boys grow inches...they don't grow away...from their mother...and what she gave.