Three years in and the grief is oppressive. Louie should be starting his freshmen year and all I can consider is our last proper hug, an impromptu squeeze as he passed me in the kitchen. I am sad for the two+ years of his life with cancer; doctor’s visits, loneliness and pain he endured. I am sad that’s he’s not here, despite the selfishness of that. I am sad I’m no longer a mom. That our home is quiet. That we cannot move in any direction.

I stay home and do nothing but feel sorry for the impassivity I have toward life. I work and feel distracted but covet the family I lost and bury my sadness. Some moments I feel like we should live. That Louie would be so upset if he knew just how sad we are. But we can’t.

Some things in Louie’s world still exist. Harry Potter. Ninja Warrior. Slogans we thought were funny (we have the meats). So many other things evolve. Trends. Slang. His friends will drive. Head off to college. Start families. In most ways, time feels frozen, often as if he just left. Isolation can do that.

We desperately wanted to have Louie’s biological sibling but the toll of depression and age has prevented that. We got a dog, but it makes us heartbroken that Louie never had a dog. A nighttime run-in with a raccoon goes from funny to somber when I want so much to share the story with him. As we consider adoption, the arduous process is prohibitive and may unwillingly force us to find joy. Once Louie said to me that he had just realized when he had kids they wouldn’t have any aunts or uncles. I feel like every trace of him is gone. And it breaks me.

Louie and I spent time on the simpliest things. Games. Puzzles. Walks. Reading. Talks. We played a game called ‘What’s coming next?’, where we predicted the style and color of the next car to drive by. Chatting in between. We played ‘Bop the balloon’, going back and forth with a remnant balloon from the last event anyone attended. Uno. For hours. Every night before bed, I gave him a hug, a kiss and a squiss (an amalgam of a squeeze and a kiss). When he was 4 and fighting bedtime, his face would re-appear asking for one more “huggy”. Of course Louie. A bazillion more hugs please.

I miss so much to see life through his eyes. I’m completely fragmented. We were open and honest with each other. A counselor came to the house once and Louie shared that he didn’t really want to be here anymore but we encouraged him to keep on. After a day at the movies with Louie and friends, I noticed that the normalcy of others exposes the abnormal plane on which we live. I need his encouragement to carry on, desperately.

In November 2015, we drove by a pond and Louie recalled asking us for coins over the years to toss in. I said I wondered what he wished for all those years ago and he said, “Not this”.