Seven years later..

{Tuesday} I rolled out of bed and acknowledged the band around my heart. It wasn't the raw tightness like years past, just a slightly breathless feeling. I knew it would be there. I saw my sweet baby next to my bed, resting so peacefully. I cried. Pure joy overflowed from my eyes as I focused on the simple act of his chest rhythmically moving up and down. Up and down. Over and over I watched. "Oh God, for every breath he takes I thank you. SO much. Thank you God, thank you God." In the stillness of the morning I just sat on the edge of my bed letting the emotions, the good and the bad wash over me. I went into the next room and woke up K. I pulled him on to my lap and just held him. He was groggy, and a little grumpy, and cute. I looked in his eyes and wondered if he felt anything for the sweet one who was identical to him. Did he know what this day was? He smiled - that huge crooked one - and asked me what I was doing. I just told him I loved him and corralled he and the other boys down the stairs. K would be late for school if I let sentimentality win the moment. It was the normal breakfast and meds, lunch made, notes to teachers written, clothes on, feeding Kai, helping K to the bus. Just like any other day, but so not. On the way to preschool I cried. Not the ugly cry. Not sobs. Just a wet face as I drove the familiar route. Of course "Some times he calms the Storm" would come on the radio. Of course. We had a video montage with that song playing at the memorial service. "Hello God, yep - you remember too, huh? Give him a hug for me..." When Dave got home it was the two of us in an embrace that remembered. Remembered the sweet, the tough, the impossible. His mom came over and she got to be grandma while we got some quiet. Dinner, talking, peacefulness, remembering. Dinner in the same town that he was born in. The same town where we had to hear the agonizing report from the doctors. The same town he died in. Driving there in the snow, in the cold, with the same sights and feelings along the way Dave remembered things I didn't. I remembered things he had forgotten. We held hands. We talked about it. We ate. We laughed. Baby Kai cuddled close to me. On the way home Dave made the observation that in 5 months we would reach the milestone of 10 years since our first date. Ten years. I laughed and said it had been a really, really good ten years except.... ...And I proceeded to list off all of the difficult things that we had been through. And he said "Except for all of the things that have made us who we are today, huh?" And I reconsidered. A good ten years indeed. And a good seven years. No "excepts".