A Month In

It's been a month. How has it been a month? This was not supposed to happen. Not to you. Not our Owen.

Time passes so strangely now. It's the before and the after.

Learning to live in, with, and through the after is hard to describe. It's survival. It's tears and heaviness and regret and sleepless nights and panic attacks and confusion and guilt and longing and anger and shame and fear and emptiness and memories and laughter.

We're thankful for the laughter. When it comes it's usually preceded or immediately followed by a sigh, and a "Godammit Owen". Seriously, "Goddammit Owen".

We miss you so much buddy. It takes our breath away.

The cats still break your door down every day looking for you. Can they sense a part of you that's still in that room? Do they see something we don't? I wish we could see what they see. Something other than an empty space, the hole in our lives that will never be filled.

We struggle to fill that hole with whatever light we can find. Scraps of joy. Fragments of contentment. Moments where the world seems less heavy.

Most days, light can be hard to find, elusive, hidden behind clouds of grief and sadness. We look for it anyway. We chase it. We hold it tight for as long as it will let us. It's never long enough. It will never be enough.

We know the emptiness will find us again. We fill it with memories, stories, pictures, pieces of a life too short. It somehow feels less overwhelming when we remember. So, this is how we spend our days now. Remembering our boy.

"Godammit Owen". We love you.