His Birthday in Pictures

that morning

sending our donations to his memorial funds

baking his cake

his balloons

decorating his cake later that day

those are supposed to be birds. i'm not an artist!

getting ready to send him his balloons

each balloon had a message telling him what we missed about him

3:52pm letting them go at the time of his birth

and some got stuck on the powerline - doh!

but they eventually wiggled themselves free and went off to be with Juju

eating cake after dinner

some of his gifts

 

his memorial ad that ran in today's paper instead of on his birthday, but still wonderful nonetheless

Happy 1st Birthday, Little Man!

Dearest Julius,

Today is your 1st birthday! Happy Birthday!

The month leading up to this day has been so hard, baby boy. I've been trying to figure out how to make it on your special day without you. The truth is, I don't want to celebrate this day without you. How am I supposed to do this without you? I want you here. I want you to smash a cake. I want you to stare at balloons and try to grab for them. I want you to smile your beautiful smile at us while we sing happy birthday to you. I want you to attempt to open your presents.But instead I get to make plans to keep me busy. I get to attempt to decorate a cake like your urn, and spend time in your garden. I get to donate the money I would have spent on your gifts to your memorial funds. I get to send your balloons up to heaven.

Daily I ask myself how this came to be my reality. I'm just not sure what fork in the road brought me to this place. Last year at this time labor with you was just beginning. We were at home dealing with contractions, not sure if we should go to the birth center, not sure if we would be coming home with our baby boy. Hours later you made your way into this world, the picture of perfection and health. You were already trying to lift your head hours after birthday, and were a pro at breastfeeding from the start. The second we saw you, we were in love deeper than we had ever been before.

We spent 4.5 months with you before we painfully had to part. And we've been in hell ever since. Trying to learn  how to function again without you has proven to be a very complicated thing. You became part of our beings from the moment you came into existence - our lives and purpose all wrapped up in you. So your absence has left us mere shells of the people we once were, aged several lifetimes over. I have fought every day for every step and breath I have taken. I have struggled without you, and still do.

And though I'm still angered by the fact that you are no longer here, that you no longer have the one thing you deserve the most - life, I have come to a point in my grief that I can say that I am more grateful than resentful. I am grateful to know you (and I do know you deeper than anyone else does). I am grateful for every single second we spent together. I am grateful that you refused a bottle, only wanting your momma. I'm grateful that you opened my eyes and my heart wider than they had ever been opened before. That you taught me how to love completely and unconditionally (even when death has separated us). That you showed me what is most important in life. That you brought me joy and happiness all of yours.

Because of this and all of the love we continue to share even though you are no longer here, today I will celebrate your all too short life. I will spend time in your garden with pride, I will send up balloons with joy in my heart, I will light candles and smile, I will bake your cake gladly. I will do it all for you because even though everyday without you is hell, May 30, 2010 will forever be the day that you came into our lives and changed us. It will always be the day that I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. So today will focus on how much your presence enhanced our life. Today will be about your presence, rather than the weight of your absence.

I love you so much Julius. We all miss you so much. Please shower us with your love today. Please stay extra close to us as we mark this huge milestone day without you. Know that we will never stop loving you or caring about you. It's just not possible, you are too important. You are part of us and not even death can take that away.

Loving you forever, my chunky monkey,
Mommy

The Day is Soon Approaching...

actually several milestone days are soon approaching. the first of them being may 1st, the start of may, the month in which my baby boy was born. the week after that {may 8th} is mother's day. and then 3 weeks after that {may 30th} will be Julius' first birthday. that day i know will be the most intense of them all. a day that should have been spent celebrating his happy life and all that he's accomplished during the year, will be spent feeling the weight of his absence.

to say that i dread the start of may is an understatement. thinking about it too long almost causes me to begin hyperventilating. i find myself struggling to breathe. and so up until now, i've been avoiding the topic all together. i've been living in denial. thinking that if i just pretend it isn't there, it won't be. i've learned that things don't exactly work that way. so at my appointment this weekend with my counselor, she brought it up and asked what my plans were, and i immediately shutdown. apparently she had not gotten the memo about my plans to just ignore the entire month.

well, in fact, no she had not gotten the memo, and even if she had gotten the memo, i'm convinced that she would have ripped it up and thrown it in the trash. unfortunately for me {at that moment}, she cared too much about me to allow me to continue to live in denial. so she gently forced me to begin to think about my plans for that day. we talked about it, and some of the things that i could do. her feelings were that if i have a plan in place for that day, it would not be as scary {and me being the planner that i am, i know she is right}. so in a desperate attempt to try and face this huge milestone day head on, i created an event on FB asking my dear friends to help me remember my precious Juju. it was hard to even type it up and post it, but i felt like i needed to. i needed to acknowledge that may 30th is coming. and i know i will need the exra prayers and support.

i do plan to do some of the typical things that i do to remember and honor him on that day: balloon release, writing him a letter, spending extra time with him reflecting on all of our time together. but i am really at a loss for things D and i could do together as a family. it's just so hard planning this day without him. and i need some help from my BLMs. if you have already experienced a milestone birthday without your little one, what are some of the things you did/do on that special day to honor/remember them?