Dear Miranda,
I'm not sure where to start. You've been on my mind all day long.
I cried in public today. It wasn’t just a few tears I could quickly wipe away and hope no one noticed, this was actual crying. I’ve cried in public plenty of times over the past month, but not like this. I lucked out. There was a bathroom available that I was able to duck into rather quickly.
I had a chiropractors appointment this morning. While I waited in the lobby there was a lady there who had a beautiful little girl with her. The little girl was simply being a little girl. It was the simple acts of being that got to me. She wanted a drink from the water cooler. She played with some stuffed animals she’d brought with her, even giving one an adjustment on the table in the middle of the lobby. It was a happy scene, but it overwhelmed me in a way I haven’t felt very often.
The grief I feel for you, because of you, over losing you is so different from what I feel for your mother. She and I had 15 years together. We should have had 40 more. My grief for mommy is so complex and deep it’s difficult for me to comprehend, much less explain. My grief for you, while no less painful, is so very different. We never got to know each other. We have so little history for me to grieve. Our time together was brief, so incredibly brief I worry about what I’ll forget.
My grief for you often feels empty, like a blank sheet of paper. It’s about unrealized potential. It’s about all the things that will never be. Grieving the loss of that which might have been feels so different than grieving that which was and was supposed to be.
Needless to say, I miss you dearly. I see you, and everything you’ll never have a chance to be, in every child I see.
I love you. I miss you. Give mommy a kiss from daddy.
Love,
Chad
