Longing to Long

Many people asked me what I planned to do today. It felt strange to explain that the thing I most wanted on Jackson’s birthday was to have time to be by myself, without my living children.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore my children and honestly credit them with helping me rebuild my life and sense of purpose after losing Jackson. They helped me reclaim motherhood and filled the house with that familiar pitter-patter sound again. They brought back the simple toddler joys of eating cheerios on demand, imitating farm animal sounds in the bathtub, and dancing to “Run Baby Run” in circles around the living room. Six years ago, I would have given anything to know that this future was possible. I couldn’t bear to keep carrying the aching and unrelenting grief in my body or the deafening silence and painful stillness in our house. I needed to know it wouldn’t always feel this way. That I wouldn’t deeply and perpetually long for Jackson every hour of every day for the rest of my life.

Six years later, I do not long in the same way for Jackson. I suspect this is, at least in part, related to the passage of time; it just stings less the farther we get carried from the blast site of Jackson’s death. However, there is more to this. I have come to realize just how hard it is to grieve while caring for young children. It’s not that I’m hiding my feelings from them, I just don’t have the spaciousness to notice them, let alone sit with them or express them. I’m so focused on feeding them, changing them, holding them, cleaning them, soothing them, playing with them – now I find myself longing for silence, longing for stillness, longing to long for Jackson.

I decided to take the day off today and practice what I’m calling “intuitive grieving” – just following my own wants and needs on the anniversary of Jackson’s death. Much like intuitive eating, which focuses on “listening to your body” rather than adhering to rules or external constraints, I am practicing following my own lead without having to consider anyone else’s. For me, outsourcing childcare is a necessary requirement for intentionally creating this freedom to experience my grief, at my own pace, without rushing, without explaining, without the constant planning and managing and juggling of meal times, nap times, play times. Any parent can attest to how difficult it can be to get a single thought out to your partner at the dinner table without getting diverted by a question, meltdown, or sudden mess of spilled milk. Toddlers can throw-off any vibe — not just dinner-table vibes and vacation vibes, but grief vibes, too.

Today, I longed to vibe in my grief without buzzkills. Today, I longed for the spaciousness to feel my feelings, wrap myself up in a blanket, put my feet up, watch videos of Jackson, do some writing, listen to Bahamas, smile and cry, sob and laugh, and eat without sharing. Six years ago, my grief felt like hopelessness, fear, and despair. Today, my grief feels like a long walk in the park with an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s hard to explain, but I love to spend time with this friend, even if it hurts and my face is wet with tears. There is a visceralness to the pain, just as there is a visceralness to the love. Connecting with these intense feelings and sensations makes me feel alive. And it’s where my dead son lives. It comforts me to know that my grief and love for Jackson are always with me, tucked away but never gone, even when they are understandably drowned out by the chaos of day-to-day life.

By the time I pick the kids of from school, I am ready to resume being with them. I am ready to hold them and smell them and love on them. I am more tolerant of the chaos, more open to the questions, more patient when the milk spills. I will hold them extra tight tonight, knowing full well what a freaking gift they are. And I will kiss them goodnight with a touch more gravity, knowing full well how fragile and beautiful being alive truly is.

Soon, The Youngest

Today marks six years since Jackson's death.

His little brothers may never have met him in person, but they've grown up with Jackson all around them — his name banner draped on the wall, his little blue ceramic handprint stuck by the window, his photos hanging above the mantle.

Owen's old enough to ask questions; old enough to share his thoughts. "I'm sad I never got to meet Jackson". "If I died, I would miss you". "Everybody in the whole city will die some day."

Mateo doesn't seem to know yet - but sometimes he points to photos of Jackson, says his attempt at Owen's name ("Ay yah"), and when I say "that's Brother Jackson", he furrows his little brow at me, and looks back at the photo, curious.

—

When Jackson died, we'd only been living here for a few weeks. Much of our stuff was still in boxes — but most of what we'd gotten out at that point was Jackson's. His toy kitchen, his little mop-and-broom, his bouncy zebra, his books and stuffed animals. He'd been running around the house covering mirrors with tiny handprints and lip-marks from kissing his reflection.

We left for a few weeks to my parents' house nearby, and tried to figure out how we'd return. One choice we made: we were paralyzed by the thought of ever having to wipe-away those smudged mirrors, even if by accident or time itself. We asked our family to clean them, so we could move back in without feeling like we were living in a museum.

Natalia saved so many of Jackson's things — toys, books, and above all, clothes. We didn't know when we'd have more kids, but we knew we'd want to at some point - and when we did, we'd want to have some of those things for them.

It has been a lovely thing to see Owen and Mateo wearing Jackson's things — those shirts, those sweatpants, that fancy-looking tan coat with the buttons. The backpack Jackson got for his second birthday has become Owen's daily backpack. The crib where Jackson lived and died has held his sleeping brothers.

—

Jackson was two. Mateo is nearly there - he'll be two in February. We've got more of Jackson's clothing in storage here, but it won't be long now until Mateo grows beyond Jackson's size, and we end the era of Jackson being the "older" big brother.

Soon, Jackson will become the "younger" big brother.

No more hand-me-downs, the toys moving out of rotation, and our house aging out of a toddler's wobbly walk. It'll become harder to clearly picture Jackson — whether from the fading memories, or the absence of Mateo's toddler-laugh.

And yet: Owen and Mateo will continue to grow and learn more about Jackson. Increasingly-detailed questions, a richer understanding of their brotherhood. A deeper relationship to their increasingly-littler oldest brother, long-gone.

Frequently Asked Question #4 (Poem by Tita)

How old are they?

That depends, do you mean
how long have their bodies held breath? Or,
how long have their bones existed on earth?

Because I still have his bones.
I still have them as dust in a plastic bag which —
now that we’re talking about it — is probably
older than all of them.

But maybe we are all like that: pieces
of us have always existed
in another form.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Because my sister grew those bones in her body,
so, even before, they were once something else,
weren’t they?

Anyway, if we always existed before,
maybe that means we’ll always exist.

So, I’ll keep his bones.
I’ll keep them as dust and
I’ll keep them in a plastic bag.
And I’ll also keep that bag in a well-polished box
that was once a tree growing tall in a grove somewhere.
(Don’t worry, we etched his name
on the box, so we won’t go confusing it with anything else, like a tree.)

And he’ll always exist.

So, to answer your question, they are one
and four
and two
and eight

and, also,

infinite.

"Hello, spider"

Today marks five years since we lost Jackson. Five years feels like a long time, in the abstract - yet I can still very-vividly picture him - can feel him sitting on my hip, bare legs in the sticky August heat, running around our new house cackling. Five years is enough time to have a year of grieving, to have two more kids, to have our entire world change around us.

And yet, I can also vividly remember those early seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months.

Time is strange like that - and the change that comes with it sometimes feels gradual, like erosion, or swift, like a river jumping its bank. After awhile, the landscape is unrecognizable - but it's very-much shaped by its past.

---

For us, our community carried us through those early weeks.

I recall a concept of "concentric circles of grieving", which still sticks with me:

Natalia and I are in the middle, with family and friends in increasingly-distant concentric rings. (The idea is that the inner rings can lean on the outer ones, but that the inner grievers should avoid carrying outer-rings' burdens - whether that's work, or others' expectations of grief, or showing up to some event.)

At first, it's this really simple diagram - concentric rings, or a hub-and-spoke. That community support made all the difference - having family together, no expectations, "plans without commitments", and all the rest. We moved in with my parents for a couple weeks, Natalia's family came up from California. I walked alone in Discovery Park for hours - at one point, a stranger asked if I was okay, and when I said my son had just died two days ago, I found myself getting a hug in the woods from a stranger.

Grief turns out to be this near-universal experience. If you haven't really felt it yet, it'll find you some day - it's part of loving somebody. Friends just started opening up to us about their own grief in ways we hadn't expected. My friend Trevor, on maybe day five, how he'd felt when he lost his dad - that it's a black hole that never goes away, but "nice things start to grow around the edges".

When the one-year mark rolled around, we wanted to gather our community again, to thank all of you, and find a way to remember Jackson. That's our Flower Walk, which we do every September on a weekend between his birthday (the 11th) and the anniversary of his death (the 20th).

We gathered at Green Lake, everybody had these blue shirts and pink wristbands, and we walked around the lake together.

---

A curious, wonderful thing has happened in these five years: we keep having these walks, people keep wearing these shirts, we're all doing kindness acts in his memory, and we're starting to find that, perhaps, that simple hub-and-spoke diagram is turning into something much more beautiful: a spiderweb.

See, what keeps happening is that people who gave us support, have started to find each other, in strange little ways. We've got friends who are out walking with their blue shirts on, only to get approached by a neighbor who, turns out, also has one of our blue shirts at home.

A friend saw our Jackson Kindness Cards showing up in a strangers' post on social media, on the other side of the country - we have some clues like this that these cards are just circulating all over the place.

One of Natalia's psychology supervisors had a patient just randomly bring a kindness card to their session, because that patient had randomly found Natalia's guest episodes on Charlie Swenson's podcast, found this website, printed out the cards, and brought it with a small gift for their psychologist. All of this taking place across the country with no upstream connection to us.

This year, a family was at their kid's soccer game, only to realize that another family at the field was wearing the same Jackson shirts. These two families' kids were soccer teammates but the families had no idea they were connected in this way.

Beyond these coincidental encounters, there are so many of you who have grown closer since Jackson's passing. You're forming and growing these connections in these "outer rings" of that grief diagram, and it's so beautiful to see.

---

At his service, I told this little story about Jackson and spiders:

When we moved to our current place in August, there were spiders in the yard and on the porch.

In the evenings, Jackson and I would often sit on the front steps, and he’d toddle around in his new yard, listening for fire trucks in the distance. On one evening, he encountered a spider making a web next to our door.

Natalia is terrified of spiders. When a spider appears on the wall, I’m the one who handles the situation while she flees for safety.

Jackson, like all kids, learned through imitation. I wanted him to learn that spiders are helpful and harmless, at least on this side of the mountains. So, we’re sitting outside on the porch, and I say “Hello, Spider. Have a nice day.”

From then on, every time we saw a spiderweb, Jackson would say “Hello, Spider. Have a nice day.” Now, whenever I see one, I hear his voice echoing that little greeting.

One massive gift from Jackson is how these Flower Walk shirts, kindness cards, and friendships are growing-around-the-edges of this grief. In a way, he's teaching _us_ to approach things that might otherwise seem scary, but are really quite harmless: approaching a stranger, sharing kindness, saying hello, keeping in touch.

---

So: five years on, and our concentric-ring-thing looks like an early page in The Very Busy Spider. That web is clearly larger than we'll ever know, which truly has me in awe.

Thank you, as ever, for your love and support - and beyond us, please also share that kindness with others around you, friends and strangers alike. Grief and suffering are universal experiences, and sometimes it's just a bit of validation and kindness that can carry somebody.

You never know who could really use a kindness card today - and they might even have a blue shirt of their own tucked underneath their jacket.

Mateo is Jackson's Brother, Too

Since before Owen was born, or even given a name, or even conceived, he was “Jackson’s brother.” And ever since he was born, we made sure he knew about his older brother by keeping him alive in photos, memories, and conversations – even if Owen couldn’t see him. We made an effort to carefully tend to this brotherhood relationship, hoping it would stick, while also being careful not to force it. We have done our best to follow Owen’s lead and allow their relationship to unfold at Owen’s pace.

It dawned on me several weeks after Mateo was born that we gave not given much thought to his relationship with Jackson at all. Maybe because we’ve been so consumed with other demands – like parenting a three-year-old, surviving the pandemic – but maybe also because it feels less salient this time around. In our minds, Mateo is “Owen’s brother”.

This was surprising for me to realize, and a little bit difficult to admit. I immediately judged myself for not dedicating the same careful attention to Jackson and Mateo’s brotherhood. And, I reminded myself that it makes perfect sense that I have made a greater effort to tend to Owen and Mateo’s brotherhood. I recalled an early conversation with Bryan, shortly after Jackson’s death, in which we told ourselves that someday we would simply have to spend more time thinking about and paying attention to our future living children—and that this was ok, healthy, and necessary. It wasn’t a sign of forgetting, it was a sign of adapting.

An interesting corollary of all of this has been the realization that I am far less afraid of Mateo dying in his sleep than I was of Owen. With Owen, we used an Owlet monitor for every single sleep episode – every night and every nap. The Owlet monitor, which continuously measured his heart rate and blood oxygen, provided “proof of life” anytime we felt anxious about a late morning wakeup or a nap-gone-longer-than-expected. We sent it to daycare and trained the teachers to use it. We ordered a backup replacement sensor for whenever the device failed. And we very reluctantly stopped using it when Owen outgrew it (around 15 months old), and purchased a Miku (another vitals monitor) in its place. The Owlet went into storage, ready for the next baby someday.

A couple years later it was time to take the Owlet back out of storage. I charged it up in our bedroom, ready for use next to Mateo’s bassinet. But our first night home I decided not to use it. A day passed. A week passed. A month passed. Then I texted my SUDC mama friend, who also happens to be a psychologist. I texted her: “Riddle me this, I haven’t used the Owlet monitor with Mateo yet. It’s out of the box, charged up, sitting on my bookshelf – what do you make of that?” She normalized this for me, as she had a similar experience with her second-child-after SUDC. After talking to her I realized there was just a part of me that wants to leave the fear of SUDC behind. Using the Owlet multiple times per day was just a multiple-times-per-day reminder of what I’m afraid of and don’t want to be afraid of anymore.

All of this to say, I am leaning into acceptance and dialectics with Mateo’s relationship to Jackson. I’m leaning into acceptance that it understandably feels different than Owen’s relationship to Jackson – and leaning into the dialectic that although I long for Mateo to be in relationship with Jackson, it’s also been helpful for me to not always readily associate him with SUDC. I also remain open to the ways in which Mateo’s relationship with Jackson will change and evolve over time, eventually into whatever Mateo wants it to be. And I hope he can count on big brother Owen to help him navigate this, too.

Half a Decade

The other day someone asked me how old Jackson would be today. I opened my mouth to respond, only to realize I wasn’t entirely sure. Five, right? No, six. Wait… seven.

Among the many things that can make parents feel like “bad parents”, forgetting your child’s age never feels good. But how am I supposed to remember how old he would be if I haven’t been shopping for his clothes, enrolling him in school, and filling out dozens of forms with his age? I also haven’t had the chance to see him tie his shoes, start to read, or go off to summer camp. I never even got the chance to agonize over whether to hold him back or not in school – to be the oldest or youngest in his class – like everyone said I would. So, of course I’ve lost track. In my mind, he’s still holding up two fingers at his backyard birthday party - “I’m two!”.

This really hit me a couple weeks ago as Jackson’s peers all turned seven. I saw a photo of one of them holding up seven fingers for a photo. On one hand, those same two little sweet fingers I remember Jackson holding up. On the other hand, five whole fingers representing Jackson’s gaping absence. I zoomed out further, taking in the sight of their body -- tall, stretched out, no more toddler-chub at their ankles -- and their suddenly grown up face. I felt almost dizzy. When did this all happen? The passage of time felt almost violent.

We sent out an invitation for Jackson’s Flower Walk last week and I wondered what it feels like for other people to keep getting requests from us to walk in Jackson’s honor, donate to SUDC Foundation, and keep remembering our son. I noticed feeling self-conscious, worried even, that someone might have the thought “Are we still doing this?”. I don’t actually think anyone would think this, and I am certain nobody would ever say it to our face, but I felt so hurt just imagining the thought entering anyone’s mind. Then I took a step back and realized, maybe it’s a thought that has entered my own mind.

Before Jackson died I did not understand grief. Grief felt heavy and fragile and awkward. Supporting a griever felt like something I couldn’t “get right.” I would hear people talk about their pain and immediately think of silver linings or ways to change their feelings to make them more comfortable… or make myself less uncomfortable. I will admit I have definitely done mental math about others’ losses (“how long ago was this?”) in order to evaluate the appropriateness of their grief. Now I know better.

What I’ve learned about grief is this: it doesn’t go away. It changes but it stays with you, and that’s ok. Our culture of toxic positivity will have you believe that at a certain point it’s “time to move on”, or that life eventually “returns to normal.” But we never move on or go back to normal – we simply move forward in our new normal. I think you have to be in the club to truly understand this. Even those of us in the club sometimes forget – as I do, from time to time.

Bryan and I are somehow “ok” after all this. We are functioning in our lives – at work, at home, in our relationships, with each other. We somehow put our kids to bed every night, not knowing if they will wake up, but trusting that they will, or perhaps just trusting we can handle any outcome. Nobody could have shown me a scene from our current lives (joyfully whipping up pancakes on a Saturday morning with Owen and Mateo) five years ago and convinced me this was even remotely possible. But here we are, enjoying our lives with two sweet living children (and Stella!), and also missing our Jackson bub. There will always be an empty chair, there will always be a pause in the conversation, there will always be a hole in my heart. The healing happens around the edges of that hole – after five years, it’s adorned with flowers and other beautiful things that have grown out of this tragedy. But the hole remains, and nobody ever could (nor would I let them if they could) fully paper-over that hole.

September is around the corner and we are feeling all the feels that come with that. I recently stumbled on this quote and it resonates deeply with why we keep inviting others to walk in Jackson’s honor, donate to SUDC Foundation, and keep remembering our son: “It’s up to all of us who are lucky to still be on this earth to make sure that what was so special about someone’s soul lives on beyond their last breath, and, even more importantly, that it’s shared with others” – Samantha Klein.

Thank you all for your support. I will keep inviting the world to flower walks for Jackson until my legs stop working. As long as my heart is beating, I’ll be saying Jackson’s name and asking you to keep saying it with me.

Completing our Incomplete Family

We are pregnant, again. We are looking forward to welcoming another little boy, Mateo Antonio Clark, into our family in February. This was a planned pregnancy, though not part of the Original plan. 

The Original plan was always to have two kids. We decided to start young – I was 27 when we got pregnant with Jackson. I figured a few years later we’d bring our second and final baby into the world. The plan was that we’d all grow up together, our family of four. 

After Jackson died, I not only mourned the end of his life, but the end of this vision. I also specifically mourned the second and final baby we would never meet. Of course, we eventually had Owen, but this was on a much different timeline than we otherwise would have planned. Owen is here because Jackson is not. Had Jackson lived, his little sibling would have been someone else. 

From time to time I find myself wondering… who would that second and final baby have been? What would they have been like? What would their relationship to Jackson have been like? What would the backseat fights have been over? What would they have enjoyed doing together? What would our complete family of four portrait have looked like? 

Whatever it would have looked like, it looks nothing like our current family portrait. Our portrait today has two entirely different kids – Owen, our other second-but-not-final-baby, and Mateo, our bonus third baby we never planned on having at all. Both Owen and Mateo are gifts we were never “supposed” to have – but they also came at the steep cost of my first set of babies I was “supposed” to raise and grow old with.

But are we ever really “supposed” to have anything? Is the reality of what we have not truer than some idea of what we thought we were entitled to? Our current family portrait, different as it may be, is also not a lesser consolation prize. I want to make sure that my living children understand they are not understudies to an original cast. 

People ask us whether we are done having kids after Mateo. The truth is I don’t know. I never planned to birth and raise three children, but I also never planned to lose one of them along the way. Physically and emotionally, we feel very ready to be “done,” but a vasectomy also feels out of the question. I am not necessarily expecting for my children to keep dying, and nor am I sure that we would continue to have kids in the event of further tragedy. It’s hard to say when our family will feel “complete,” and I am not even sure that “completeness” is what we’re striving for. I’ll always wonder what our family would have been like had Jackson lived, and I’ll also always treasure the family right in front of me, the one I (hopefully) get to keep.

Oldest

Today Owen woke up one day older than Jackson. Our baby boy leapfrogged his big brother and became our oldest son. We showed him videos of Jackson, who he loves to see, but for the first time found ourselves stumbling over our words (“This is your big brother – err, brother”), realizing that in several years, Owen might even come to think of Jackson as his baby brother.

For two years we’ve enjoyed seeing glimpses of Jackson in Owen – a fleeting expression, a similar antic, or a familiar sounding of a word. Each clothing and toy rotation, we’ve had the bittersweet experience of immersing ourselves in old memories as we bring out yet another storage box of used t-shirts and books. This month I pulled out our very last boxes, and felt the grief of “no more boxes”, much like the grief of “no more photos.”

Up until now we’ve also enjoyed the confidence that comes with second-time parenthood. We’ve journeyed through the familiar textures of babyhood and early toddlerhood, relying more on our instincts and memories than the parenting books we used to pour over. So much of Owen’s life has been a welcome déjà vu, without too many surprises.

This morning when Owen leapfrogged his brother and was promoted to “oldest”, we simultaneously leapfrogged backwards, reverting back to first time parents to a child 2 years 10 days old – and counting. From here on out, we are back in uncharted territory. I find myself googling things like “when do toddlers drop their nap”, “when to stop using a sleep sack”, and “how to respond to tantrums.” I also find myself asking for advice from the same newbie mama friends who used to ask me for advice, back when I had the oldest child. It’s disorienting, but death doesn’t play by the rules of “natural orders.” In theory, children outlive their parents, sibling orders are fixed, and if you have been a parent for 5 years then you should have a 5-year-old to show for it. But for many families like ours, reality doesn’t play out accordingly.

But here’s the thing. We are so glad that Owen will keep growing. We never want him to stop growing. And perhaps being first-time parents to a growing young boy, and eventually a growing young man, will be a gift of its own. I’ll miss easily picturing Jackson as a big brother, and yet I trust that we will all continue to adapt to the ever-evolving shape of our family in the years to come. We will keep finding ways to help Owen feel connected to his forever-two-year-old brother.

Storm

My grief no longer feels like the turning of the tides. 
My grief feels like the onset of a deep, dark storm. 
Clouds form,
Anticipation builds,
I prepare. 

Unlike the the tide,
I do not know what the storm will feel like,
I do not know what the storm will do. 
Once it hits there is nothing 
but waiting to see blue skies again. 

Rain pounds the earth,
Saturating everything in the moisture of my memories.  
As tears trace the clenched outline of my jaw,
I am chilled to the bone with the pain of trying to remember how it felt to hear you
To see you
To feel you. 

Thoughts roll through my head like thunder,
Making it impossible to think 
of anything but your face - 
The face that I miss more than the sun itself. 

Slowly, 
As the clouds release their pressure and lighten their burden upon me,
The air becomes less frigid, 
The thunder dissipates, 
The rain is soft. 

The storm passes and the earth beneath my feet smells sweet. 
After some time,
a flower will sprout from the once dry dirt. 
A reminder that just as the earth needs the rain,
I too need this pain to sprout fresh reminders of you.

Five

Today, Jackson would be five years old. 

In nine days, it’s the third anniversary of his death.

Jackson was so full of life at his second birthday - running laps around the house, playing with his friends in the yard, eager to wear his new dinosaur backpack. 

His little brother, Owen, is going to have his second birthday this January. Today, he runs around the house, but with COVID, we don’t have friends in the yard, and while he wears Jackson’s backpack around the house, there’s no school to attend. Owen is a lovely little dude - very playful, loves to draw, enchanted with his Sesame Street dolls - he is very much his own person, while also reminding us of his brother. After all, they share the same parents, same dog, and half their genes.

Every anniversary has been different. The first one we really braced for, and it was hard. We had many people join us for his first Flower Walk, and it was a lovely reminder of how many people loved Jackson. The second one, Owen was strapped to my chest, and it was wonderful to have the role of “father” again. This year, there isn’t an in-person walk, but we do spend every day with a toddler again, and he echoes many bits of his brother, all while showing us ways that he’s his own person.

Locket has been helpful for me. Nearly-every-morning, it nudges me that there are photos and videos on-this-day-in-history with Jackson, and it helps me keep his memory close to me. Some days, like today, it’s got an overwhelming number of items in the notification - other days it’s just a single photo, and either way, it’s lovely to remember these little pieces of him. I find myself super-aware that the act of revisiting these memories can change them, like hearing a song for the first time versus the hundredth time. (You can’t have the experience of the first-listen again, and you come to know the lyrics in a different way over time. With these videos, I know how long they are, who’s about to say something, who’s about to walk out of frame, what’s about to happen.) It’s why we delight when we find somebody else’s photos and videos of Jackson - it’s like listening to a new album from your favorite artist.

This morning, we made some “CC bread” - pineapple zucchini bread with walnuts and raisins. It was one of Jackson’s very-favorite things that my mom would make for him, and our neighbor Chris gave us a zucchini last week - it felt right to make it this morning, and Owen loved it.

We’re socked-in with pretty bad smoke in Seattle today. It’s going to be an annual thing, sadly, that Jackson’s birthday will often be accompanied with thick wildfire smoke. It makes me feel claustrophobic, and anxious about climate change. It’s also common for SUDC parents to feel a creeping anxiety as the seasons change near their child’s anniversary. In previous years, when the leaves started turning, I definitely felt it - I think this year has just been so full of anxiety already that I didn’t really feel the season-changing anxiety of September this time.

On his birthday, I’m going to take some extra time to watch some videos of him, and read the cards that many of you wrote for us at his memorial. It means so much to me to have those memories of him close by. Thank you.