Living with Loss

I was going through some things today, cleaning and organizing. At first, it was fine; after a while, it broke me. Being a bereaved parent it's difficult to do most any task that involves pieces of the past and not have it conjure an emotional response. Frankly, my emotions can spark with the most mundane and benign thing; it does not have to relate to Wyatt to strike the proverbial chord, but today it was. Nothing dramatic, not photos, videos or audios, I was going through some Christmas cards we received from the year after Wyatt's death. I got through about one third of them when it hit me and thrust me to the floor in heaves of nausea and screaming through the tears. I began to wail and sob and ache at the absence of my child. It can't be, it simply can't be. But, it is. After a while, the wave of sorrow and sickness subsided so I could continue with my task, I laid down amid the various papers and books and began to look through them. I found this paper folded