Adam and I took time to be alone on Caleb's actual birthday but greatly appreciate all who remembered the light of our lives on his special day. It meant a lot to see the ways you are spreading The Caleb Effect.
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Hi Baby Boy. I love you. I miss you so much.
It is incredibly overwhelming to be here on your birthday without you. You brought all the happy I ever needed on your birthday and every day of your much too brief life. There is so much I wish I could say to you and even more I would give anything to hear you share with me too. Yes, I can still talk to you and you to me but the physical conversations have been silenced. I hate that. I hate not being with you so much. I wish I could hold you with every last wish and each candle you don’t get to have on a cake I never got to make. A knife twisted so deep it pierces my soul and leaves the jagged edges sharply fanned out in every direction just under my skin. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but they lied. I don’t know how losing you hasn’t killed me but one day the tourniquets holding pressure will get to free the rest of me. One day I’ll get to come through to the other side too. One day I will have you in my arms again. One day. One day. One day.

God, I miss you.

You will always be forever two. Six is something I can’t even imagine but I wish to God I could still be living with you.

It is like going through some kind of twilight zone existing in ultra-slow motion and yet stumbling through tricks where your life here was in warp speed. I can’t believe this even happened and I also can’t believe I’m still surviving on this planet. Like we were both snatched from Earth. They took all of you but left the shell of me. My soul went with you and my heart and body are still trying to catch up.

I haven’t had as many words for a long time and with every unfinished project or one left completely undone, there is guilt. My body and brain don’t always cooperate but Baby Bear I’m doing my best.

You have now had twice as many birthdays away from us as we got to thoroughly enjoy with you. I want each of them back. I want you back. I want our old life back. I want answers that don’t exist. We have done everything in our power to distract ourselves and try our hardest to give you the avenues to shine but sometimes it feels like we’re just spinning our wheels. Maybe I should think of this more like your grandpa’s nowhere rides (Has he taken you on one yet?). Maybe we ARE going somewhere but I can’t comprehend the meaning yet as we pass by all the same places. I wish I could see the scene from where you sit in your vroom vroom now. I hope one day I get to be on the same ride and it won’t matter where we go or how many of the same wheels keep spinning. I hope one day even sooner we finally get your vroom vroom memorial here completed.

I miss you. With every cell, laughter and tear, I miss you. You made me me and I’m still searching for all the pieces you left that made you you. It is not a surprise to anyone to know that I am lost but the day I find you again in my final destination I will never let you leave home without me again. I don’t know which way to go so keep helping me, Caleb Lennon. I still need you even if you are doing just fine without me.

I love you. Always have. Always will.
Happy birthday, Baby Boy.
One day I will celebrate all of them with you again.

One day.

Love,
Mommy
XOXOXOXOXOXO