Little things scream loud

One day, weeks after Andrew died and our lives were expected to be back to "normal" I noticed something startling. Everything that shouted "Andrew lives here!" was gone. His glasses weren't lying wherever he happened to toss them. His steel toed boots were not sitting by the woodstove. His wool socks weren't drying on the window sill. The chair by the window was empty of his bookbag, jacket, hat, and the leather gloves he was so proud of. I wasn't finding his phone and Ipod charging where he found an empty outlet. Doing laundry didn't mean telling him to get his clothes out so that I could start ours. No longer did I have to run the dishwasher at least once a day. A glance at the fridge showed me the last greeting card he ever bought me. It was a picture of a pug wearing a scarf. He had told me that he walked into the store, saw the card first thing, and knew he had to get it for me. As I was taking things off the fridge I found a list of items he needed for a science experiment.  One day I noticed on the computer that it no longer had his economics, spanish, or math lessons on the list of recently used programs. His ring tone was silent on my phone. Grocery shopping didn't mean a cart full of industrial size packages of cheese, crackers, peanut butter, trail mix, and chocolate chips.


All those little things screamed out that he was gone. That he wasn't coming back.

Halloween past and present

This is the first halloween in 18 years that I haven't had a child to share it with. In halloween's past the season would be full of costume making, cookie decorating, candy buying, house decorating, and scary (not gory) movie watching. Andrew's first halloween we dressed him as a dalmation dog. Over the years he was Winnie the Pooh, a ninja, a knight, a soldier the first halloween after 9/11, and finally at age 17 for his last halloween he was Holmes to his best friends Watson.

This year I barely remembered to get candy and put out the ceramic pumpkin that we've had since I was 10. Costumes? None for Mike and I. Some days getting dressed takes all day. However, in a fit of being silly I did put a pair of Groucho glasses on Andrew's small urn and his Shriner's hat on his scattering urn. Everyone who sees it has laughed and said it's so what Andrew would have done. 

In the end we turned off the lights, watched his favorite scary movie, The Bad Seed, and relaxed under our new fleece blankets that my sister gave us for our birthdays this year. 

Happy Halloween Andrew. We miss you!