December 3, 2009 - 16 months

What is the measure of a life? By any measure can 16 months of life be construed to have been a long and frutiful life?

Sixteen months.

Harry lived for exactly 16 months.

As of today, he has been gone for exactly 16 months.

This feels like as significant an anniversary as the one-year mark of his passing.

From this day forward, every day is one more day longer than he lived with us. Now every day really takes us into what feels like uncharted waters. It really feels like we are being pushed or carried into that place where Harry never was, never will be.

I wish I could put into words how strange it is to have a young child die. How they can be here and then just not be here. How your life was one way one day and the very next it is completely different. How this little being was with us and an integral part of us and now that form of him is gone. I suppose it is not so different from when they are born, they are not here one day and the next they are. But one is marked by joy and the other by sorrow and all the world of difference that one little difference makes.

I close my eyes and I can remember the moments of his life. I cannot comprehend that that time, the time span of his life and the time I have lived since he passed over are the same. This time and that time, they are the same yet I cannot compare them. They have no meaning, no relation.

Most days I manage to move forward, focusing on optimism, and joy and hope for the future. But when I sit, sit and stop to think and feel. To remember what was and what never will be. It is so overwhelming, the grief is so overwhelming. That is how you manage to live with the grief. It is so overwhelming, you learn to only swim in it for a very small part of your day, and not even every day. Because you will drown otherwise. But the ocean is right there, and we live on the beach, and you can't avoid going in forever. But when you do, the riptide is fierce and it takes all of your strength, everything in you, to avoid its pull under.

It is so inadequate to say that I miss Harry. Missing cannot begin to describe the ache that I feel. The jagged crack in my heart where the love for him pours out. I am forever off balance. I am forever out of sorts. I have been knocked off my axis. Like Humpty-Dumpty, you cannot put me back together again.

Children's Brain Tumor Research Foundation

Please take a minute and vote on Facebook for the CBTRF to receive $25K in research funds. This organization (CBTRF) was set up by a fellow Rhabdoid parent, Jeff Shaddix, in honour and memory of his beautiful son Jonathan, who joined Harry with the Angels in May 2009. Jonathan had AT/RT - which is the brain tumor version of Harry's Rhabdoid cancer and research into the AT/RT will also directly benefit all other Rhabdoid kids.

Thanks!
Cynthia

Here is the link to vote for CBTRF:

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR CBTRF to win a $25k Grant for Research!