Haddie Bo Bo,

It would have been your 1st Fourth of July.  Your first time seeing fireworks.  The first time to take some awkward picture with your sister in some ridiculous red, white, and blue outfit.  
I have been struggling with my thoughts lately.  I get lost going over and over that day in my head and it’s torture.  Thinking about that morning seeing your happy face before I left you.  I will forever regret leaving you.  The words, “You daughter has passed away” go through my head and makes my skin crawl.  Even thinking about that night at our house filled with family and friends and remembering the look in peoples eyes makes me so devastatingly sad all over again.  I am forever tormented by the events of that day.  I know that I have said it before but I will say it again because it is a constant feeling that I have.  I get angry, sad, and hurt, when I think of living this life without you.  Everything that this family will experience will be always missing you.  You were supposed to be Eloise’s Maid of Honor someday and she was supposed to be yours.  You were supposed to go to school dances, leave for college, make bad decisions,  and live a beautiful full life.  July 4th, 2015 you would have been 11 months.  In a month we would have been celebrating your 1st birthday.  I would have bought you some sort of frilly girly outfit to take cake smashing pictures in.  We would have sang to you…
This past holiday weekend we spent with friends who are family to us.  We had a lot of good conversations.  One we had with a close friend that has experienced the loss the his wife 19 years ago.  He said the pain gets different but it is always still there.  You live with it differently than you do the first few years.  He said it took 5 years to feel like himself again.  I found that interesting because I really do feel like a different person.  I am not sure how to accurately describe it.  When I do feel joy or happiness it isn’t AS happy or AS joyful as it would have been if you were still here.  I do not believe that I will ever feel the blissful happiness that I use to feel.  It’s strange that I don’t ever really feel like doing anything.  We get invitations to go places and when we do we have fun, we laugh, and we don’t usually regret going.  But I don’t have a desire to leave the comfort of my house where I feel safe.  I don’t have to smile in my house if I don’t feel like it.  No one will look at me when I randomly start crying.  No one will ask me or my friends how I am doing.  No one will be able to tell that I haven’t showered for days.  No one will think that because I am laughing I am doing “really well”.     
Haddie I just miss you.  My heart aches for you.  I want to see you, touch you, smell you.  I want to walk into your room and see you sleeping in your crib where you should be.  I hate that I have to scroll so far back on my photostream to find your pictures.   I know that I will see you again in heaven and I am so thankful for that.  But in that same breath you won’t need me in heaven.  You will most likely be exactly who you were intended to be.  I will still have been robbed of seeing you grow up.  Mothering you when I should have been able to.  I want my heart to feel whole again.  I want to feel free again.  Haddie I am just so sad and my heart is in pieces.    Haddie come back to me….  
Love, 
Mama
Silly Elo

Isn’t your sister beautiful!?!