Here, there and everywhere...

It all starts simply enough. I am horribly behind on laundry. Seriously, I have been way behind for months. There are too many clothes. The girls clothes need sorting. What to keep, what to toss, and the storing of off season clothes now that winter will be settling in in a matter of just a couple weeks.

There are mountains of clothes waiting to be washed. Loads waiting to be folded and put away. Out of the corner of my eye, I spy a shirt. The shirt. The one I wore when he died. A grey blue half sleeve, flowy thing my husband's sister had given me. I think I wore it because it fit.

Oddly enough, I have been able to wear it since. It hasn't bothered and teased me like the outfit I chose for his funeral. They had a singular purpose and have not been touched since. I want to get rid of it, though something just makes me stop.

This time, spotting that blue top about knocked the wind out of me. In my head, the lyrics of John Lennon's song went through my head. The song that I sang so quietly to my little boy when I held him once in the NICU, "beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy..."

In that moment, I just panicked. I struggled to think of him, the way that his soft skin felt under the heating element on his bed. I worried that I was losing him. I hadn't shed a tear for him in many days.

I was getting so mixed up, my little fiery boy and his baby brother. Their existence so interconnected and weaved together through fate and circumstance. I have a baby. He is magic for us. But I have another, one who came and went so quickly I can't reconcile it to reality sometimes.

And then I wonder. And worry. Is it enough? What is right? How should I remember my boy? Am I OK? Nearly 20 months have passed and the world moves on, farther away each second. Am I lingering too long?

I have to remind myself that he's fine, that I will see him again. But I also wish him to be here. The constant struggle in my head about being his mother without him.

This is where my mind goes at the sight of a blue shirt.