Sadness

I'm sad today. I miss you. Most days I think I manage to convince myself that you're in Cedar & I'm here & I just haven't heard from you lately, then it hits me that I'm never going to hear from you again, that you're really & truly gone. Then there are tears.

I don't often beat myself up over all of it anymore, but I have my days when I start thinking I should have let your fosters adopt you & then at least, you'd still be alive, because obviously the reason you're dead is because of my shitty parenting. On my more lucid & realistic days, I know that I have absolutely no idea what you'd have been like if you hadn't grown up in my home. Most days, I'm just grateful that I got that time with you, that I got to watch you grow into an amazing man - and you were amazing, Erin, in spite of your addictions, you were a special person. I'm not sure that anyone who spent any time with you at all ever really forgot you.

I really have only one true regret - at least today - and that is that I never got to tell you goodbye. I'm not sure that would have given me any closure, but I wish I'd been able to. To just let you know, at the end, and no matter what else, his very much I love you. It hurts me to think that you might have thought otherwise. I never stopped loving you. I never gave up on you.

I took this at the fair the other day - goats will always make me think of you.