What I wouldn't give...

I had yet another emotional ambush over the weekend. 

We are living in a rental house during the week so my sister can stay close to the BMT clinic and going home on the weekends.  So this weekend being the three month anniversary we decided not to go home.  Didn't help.  I pretty much do all right during the week when I am occupied with “caregiver duties” but when I get home --it’s on because Paxton is everywhere. 

Home is where I held him and rocked him when he was newborn and where I propped him up in Papa’s arm during the Nascar race so I could prepare dinner on Sunday afternoon.  I swear that is what started his "thing" with cars.  If it didn't have wheels on it - he had no use for it.  He loved, loved, loved cars, trucks, tractors, school buses, heavy equipment and anything with wheels.  His daddy and Papa had a rivalry going over their Nascar drivers.  Brian liked Tony Stewart and Papa liked Jimmy Johnson.  Brian was livid when he picked Paxton up one Sunday and he threw his arms up and yelled at the top of his lungs "Go Jimmy!"

On Saturday night to avoid the "bedtime melt down" I would gather him up in the bed with me and turn the TV on anything that had music.  He loved Lawrence Welk, The Gaithers and the 50’s-60’s Oldies specials on PBS.   There he sat mesmerized until he fell asleep peacefully.  Then I would ease him into his bed and sit quietly in the rocking chair and just watch him as he slept.

How can a child I did not even know three years ago devastate me so with his absence?

I have not been able yet to remove his presence from my house.  I have moved his tent and his toys to an empty bedroom so that they are not all over the house anymore.  I didn't mind them there but they seemed to make everyone else uncomfortable.  His little booster chair is still sitting in my dining room chair and his swing still hangs in the backyard an ever present heartache every time I glance out the window.  The big wheel that he had not yet grown into, sandbox and sit and spin are still out under the porch where I pass by them every time we come home.  His clothes and diapers still in the bedroom drawer and even his Thomas the Train toothbrush still sits next to ours in the holder.  Baby steps.

Though I still fuss every time I snap a nail because of the child-proof latches on the cabinets – I won’t let Donald remove them.  They are evidence that he graced our lives – proof that he was here although for such a short span.  I don’t want to forget one minute of him I don’t want him out of my life, out of my mind or out of my house.

I really don’t want to be weird about it but right now I’m just not ready. 

What I wouldn’t give to just hold him and smell that sweet baby smell and touch his soft unruly hair, kiss the tips of his sweet little toes and just languish in all that was him.

But instead I will take his binky, and his blanket and sit in the rocking chair that I rocked his daddy in when he was a baby hold them both in my dreams one more time.