ONE

We Love You Forever
We Like You For Always
As Long As We Are Living Our Baby Boy You Will Be. ~ The DeLoach Version

Jackson Neil DeLoach
Born May 7, 2013
6 Pounds, 13 Ounces
20 Inches

The day is here.

His day is here.

Our baby boy is ONE.

One beautiful and entirely too short life is ONE.

ONE.

The Love Letter of All Love Letters......Here we go.

Sweet Jackson Neil,

YOU.

Our little love. Our great love. Our beautiful baby angel.

We have now lived 365 days without you and we miss you even more than we did one year ago. You own the other half of our hearts and we hope your chunky sticky baby fingers can find a way to put our hearts back together again one day. We sent our hearts to heaven with you at 12:09 on May 7, 2012. YOU will always have our hearts, even if you do figure out how to glue them together. Just remember, even if our hearts are glued....please save as big of a piece of them as you would like. It is yours to keep and our hole to live with. We live for YOU.

We love you with a love that is never ending. We need you in ways we cannot describe to even each other sometimes. We miss you with every fiber of our being every second of every day. We cry a little everyday for you. We cry for the person you were. We cry for what we have lost. We cry for what you would have been. We cry for the lessons you have taught us. We cry for HOPE. We cry for FAITH. We cry for LOVE.

We cry because our arms are empty and we want YOU in them. 

On this side of eternity we will never have answers for why you left us so soon and why our arms are not full of you, everyday. However, we do understand the following:

You are an inspiration.

You are grace.

You are beautiful. You are amazing.

You give and spread HOPE.

You give us (and many, many others) strength.

You make us angry and you also make us so sad.

You make us happy and you make us cry in a hot second.

You are gratitude.

You are patience, kindness, and goodness.

You are LIGHT and Sunshine. And even a butterfly here and there :)

You are LOVE. All consuming love. Can't live without it kind of love.

YOU are the love of our lives. #1 is ONE. 

YOU made us Daddy and Mommy.

Jackson, you have touched so many lives in just ONE year. You have certainly changed our lives, and we will continue to try our best to be BETTER and not BITTER. We want to be better for you and better for the world. We always want to make you proud. We hope that you can smile from heaven watching us, and know that every step and every heartbeat of your journey (then, now and forever) means something real here on Earth. We will always believe in YOU. 

We ask you to continue to watch over us, guide us and keep us safe. We will hold you tightly in our hearts and our love for you will continue to grow. We will find you and see you in our dreams. That is where we will play, color, smile, read, snuggle, run, laugh, sing songs, eat ice cream, chase Lucy and even throw the football with your adorable Daddy. Dreams are where we will find you until we see you and hold you again. 

We love you Jackson Neil DeLoach. So very much. Always and Forever.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday to YOU.

Happy Birthday dear sweet angel Jackson!

Happy Birthday to YOU! 

Good night sweet angel of ours. Love you to the moon and back. Kiss kiss kiss and a never ending squeeze!

All of our love,

Daddy and Mommy

 

Time.

“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
-Rose Kennedy

I concur.

Sometimes I think my whole body is covered in scar tissue. Some of that tissue is thick and tough as nails, and some of it is as thin as thin gets.

The pain is never gone. It never will be gone. This, we have always known.  Just when I feel like I have my arms around it, the pain cuts right through all that progress.


I could equate it to my flowers outside that keep getting pelted with rain, hail, wind, all-around weird weather and even the occasional rocking chair. They grow and grow, and then with one bad storm....they have to find a way to make it work all over again. Except they never looked the same as before. It is a never-ending cycle. Growth. Another storm. Rain. Growth. Then a nasty windy day that turns things up again.  I completely understand how this feels.

Pain and flowers. Somewhere in my brain this makes sense.

The pain from Jackson will lesson, eventually. I just think that our scar tissue is a little thin right now. And that is OK. It is supposed to be thin. Our son is almost ONE.

ONE.

I cannot believe it. THIS I cannot wrap my arms around. How? Why? Do we have to? Seriously? ONE. My God. How?

We are both just sad right now. It is hard to find the strength to celebrate his day when you are heartbroken. All I can think about is....this time last year. I think about my final few weeks of pregnancy often. I think about how wonderful those last few weeks were with Jackson and how excited we were. I think about how much I enjoyed being pregnant. I think about how carefully I was preparing his room, and how I felt like it would never be ready. I think about how excited everyone was for his arrival. I think about Russ looked at US, and how he was so ready to be a Daddy. I think about selecting his "going home outfit", and how this was a big decision for me. I think about how I slipped the bonnet that the outfit came with into the hospital bag because I wanted him to come home in a traditional outfit and I knew that his Daddy would be less than amused with his son coming home in bonnet. I think about how we debated about the outfit because everyone thought Jackson was going to be HUGE and surely a newborn outfit would not fit him! Turns out he was not big. What they thought was weight, was actually length. He was long and skinny, and that outfit would have fit him perfectly. My little 6 pound frog was built just like his Daddy. I think about the child birthing class we attended, and how I watched Russ lovingly burp and swaddle a cabbage patch doll with perfection, all the while talking softy to the doll and calling it Jackson Neil. I think about how swollen and large my feet were at the end of a day, and how I wondered if they would ever return to normal because if they did not...I was going to have to have a  massive shoe sale. I think about how I could look in my rear view mirror and see the new baby set up behind me, and how this made my heart skip a beat. I think about how much we loved to see him on the ultrasound monitor, and how adorable he was with his tongue constantly sticking out. We wondered why he did that, and we also laughed about how large his feet were on the monitor :) Oh, those feet those feet those feet!

Most of all, I think about my mornings with him. That was our time. I miss my mornings with him and I would give ANYTHING and I mean ANYTHING to have just ONE more morning with him. We played in his room every morning before I left for work, and it was the most wonderful part of the day. I am glad I have these memories of him, and I am glad he made sure that I remember them. I will always remember these moments not because they were my final moments with him, but because they are the sweetest and best moments. We were happy. We were complete. We were together. Me and my son. My son who is soon to be ONE.

This time of year is just tough. It is tough for our whole entire family. We are all hurting. We all miss that baby boy more than we can ever say. We are all sad and everyone's scar tissue is thin.

Spring brings so much life and color into the world, and in many ways....we feel like we are living in a black and white colorless world. Things feel quieter. Things feel duller. Things feel uncertain. Things either feel emotionless or shot full of it....no in between. No middle. Everyone around us seems to be moving on and happy, and that is great.....but we are still standing here. It is like we are at a train station ready to board and something keeps stopping us from getting on the train with our bags in hand. Train after train comes through and here we stand. They do a final call for boarding, and we chose to stay behind on the platform. Maybe the month of May train has to arrive, and then we can get on and feel good about it. I don't know. I am not sure what we are waiting on or why it feels this way. I wish it were different. I wish we could take that BIG step forward.

I have taken time to go back and read so many posts from the past few months. I can see progress. I can. It is small. It is little tiny steps. We still have not taken the BIG step. I can clearly see that in my writing.

What is the BIG step?

I don't know.

I know it is not another child. I know it is not.

If I had to take a stab at it, I  would say that we have got to figure out where we are with Jackson and everything that happened to us that day and everyday since. We have to find that place where we are comfortable with where he is, and how we can love him completely but still move forward with life. THAT is the hardest part. Hope, Faith and Love are in the bags we carry, we just have to figure out what train we will board and we have to be ready to take the BIG step FORWARD.

Today, is not a move forward day. Tomorrow is not a move forward day.

May 7th is not a move forward day.

Jackson has gotten every moment of everyday before he ever arrived and he will continue to get that from us. This is his year. He will get all 365 days of it (and then some and then some more), and then we will figure out when and if we are ready to move forward. We will wait and make sure we are fully ready in every way before we take that big step onto the train. When we transform from standing on a platform to sitting on a train whose destination could be Anywhere-But-Here, everyone will know it because they can feel it from us through our words and our actions. Most of all, we will know it, because we will be happy and at peace with it. When we sit on that train and look at each other, we will breathe, exhale, close our eyes, open our hearts....and get carried away.

All of this takes TIME.

Our son needs time.

Our wounds need time.

Our flowers outside need time.

Everything right now needs time.

Growth and healing happens in time.

Time will not heal everything, but in time we will find healing and HOPEfully the pain will lessen. Then we can find a way to move forward with the pain and know that everything is exactly how it is supposed to be, even if it is not how we imagined it or wanted it. A life free of questioning what happened. A life free of anger about it all. A life free of this darkness. A life full of acceptance and peace. A life fill of understanding. A life full of "I cry a little bit once a day for my angel son and I am good with it". A life full of trust and faith in God. A life full of color. A life full of LOVE. A life full of goodness. A life full of laughter. A life full of smiles. A life full of sunshine. A life full of fun. A life full of living. A life full of life. A life full of HOPE.

A life for Jackson and with Jackson.

That is where we need to be. THIS just takes time.

I want to live this quote one day.

"Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver

When I have THAT figured out, I will be on the train with both of my boys, RND and JND ready to rock this one wild and precious life.

That will be the day.

Hey, at least I am not looking for a certain train. That is progress folks.

I have one picture to share with this post. I took it this week, as I was pulling out of the driveway in the evening. Someone is almost ONE, and more beautiful and amazing than ever. Such a mature sunset :) After all, he has had nearly ONE year of practice! We love him and miss him so very much. There is HOPE that we can find a life full of peace when we experience a breath taking moment like this one.  We see you sweet boy!

We love you Jackson Neil.

All the time, and for the rest of time.

Love,
Mom and Dad

See You Again

"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much" - Mother Teresa

Isn't that the truth!

We kicked off the 30 days of Jackson on Sunday, and it is a smorgasbord of emotions and feelings (smorgasbord...what a great and fun word, I am going to have to use it more often). I am sure I will be able to write about it all one day, but I just can't right now. Tonight, I feel like a song and a few photos is the best possible summary of the last few days.

Thanks Mother Teresa for the quote, and lets thank Carrie Underwood for this new awesome single. I could not have heard it at a better time. It is a beautiful song. Here we go...

"See You Again"

Said goodbye, turned around
And you were gone, gone, gone
Faded into the setting sun,
Slipped away
But I won’t cry
Cause I know I’ll never be lonely
For you are the stars to me,
You are the light I follow

(Sunset on his 11 month day! Hello beautiful and perfect!)
 
[Chorus]
I’ll See you again, oh
This is not where it ends
I will carry you with me, oh
Till I see you again
I can hear those echoes in the wind at night
Calling me back in time
Back to you
In a place far away
Where the water meets the sky
The thought of it makes me smile
You are my tomorrow

(It was Sonday, and he was just riding shotgun with Mama!)
 
 [Chorus]
I’ll See you again, oh
This is not where it ends
I will carry you with me, oh
Till I see you again



[Bridge]
Sometimes I feel my heart is breaking
But I stay strong and I hold on cause I know
I’ll see you again, oh
This is not where it ends
I will carry you with me, yeah yeah

(Gift from Jennifer! Awesome verse and lyric from a favorite band, Third Day, who originally started singing together at camp!)
 
[Outro]
I’ll See you again, oh
This is not where it ends
I will carry you with me, oh
Till I see you again
Till I see you again,
Till I see you again,
Said goodbye turned around
And you were gone, gone, gone.

(Sunshine and Footprints. And an insanely ruffly blouse! That is how we do it!)
 
We love you JND.

We will see you again. You are our tomorrow and the light that we follow.

Love,
Mom and Dad

Love Letter #4

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” - Lao Tzu


Jackson-


Today I write to you.

Today I need to write to you.


I have written you a thousand letters in my head and in my heart, but today I need to put something in black and white. Time to flesh it out.


I have no pictures. I just have words.

It is hard to believe that you are 10 months old, and just a few weeks short of 11 months. Double digits. How did that happen? Why does it have to happen? I feel like any parent on this one. You look at your baby and wonder, where did the time go and why are you getting older? Do you really have to grow up? You want them to stay right like they are. You want to freeze time forever. If I could hold right here for just a little while, I think I would be alright. I want to stop time right here. I am not ready to move on. I am not prepared for what is ahead.

In less than two months, the wound that I have been trying to heal and pack ice around will get ripped open again. I am going to need some fresh ice and fresh bandages.


Since we cannot freeze time and stay in this very moment....we will just take it one day at a time. That is what we have done since Day 1, so why would the days ahead be any different. Chin up. Breathe. Step forward. Repeat.

The only upside to the 1 year mark is this: We can stop measuring time in your "firsts". All those first holidays, first tooth, first steps, first road trip, first words, first food, first this and first that. Sometimes it felt like everyday had a first. This is something we can stop thinking about. We had a year full of virtual firsts and what-might-have-beens. Thankfully, those nightmares can stop. We will never stop thinking of you or wondering what you might be doing, but at least we can emotionally let go of the "firsts". The only "first" that we need to remember and hold onto is that you are our FIRST. You are the greatest first. Our angel first. You made us parents, and we will love you forever, #1.

I have to apologize to you because I have trouble answering the following question that comes up at least 5 times a week.

"Do you have children?" 


I don't mind questions, but this one really hurts. I think it hurts because I want to proudly say, "Yes I do!", but I often say "No I don't". I do this because I do not want to explain everything to everyone I meet. When I say "No", I feel like a little piece of my glued together heart chips off. I can feel your disappointment. I can feel the distance between you and me grow when I say "No". 
Mothers know their children inside-and-out, and I know that this response hurts you as much as it hurts me. It is such a hard question because I want people to ask about YOU and say your name, but I have trouble when people who do not even know you or even know me ask this simple, innocent question. They do not mean to hurt me, I know this. The world is just a tough place for those that have lost something. I want you to know how hard this question is for me, and how much it hurts when I chose to say "No". I promise you that you are not being shoved in a box somewhere, and forgotten. Far from it, my love.

I can only imagine the next level of this question. Picture me pregnant.

"Is this your first?"

Good Heavens. Maybe by that point, I will have this figured out and be able to slay that question.

Now, the proper answer would be, "No. It is not. It is our second.". That would be the appropriate time to say "No".  At that point, maybe "No" will feel better than it does now because that answer would be the right one.

One day, our story will resume. One day we will know that every step of this journey meant something. One day, we will have this all figured out.

Not today.

We love you.

We miss you.

We need you more than ever.

We would give anything for one of anything with you. Just one first.  Or just one moment with our first.

I have the most vivid dreams about you. This is where I visit you the most. Sometimes I wake up and think you are really here, and sometimes I wake up sobbing because the dream was too cruel to be true. I have dreams of you cuddled on my chest, as I euphorically watch the rise and fall of your chest with mine. I can feel you drift off into sleep and become a sack of flour in my arms. I dream of how the top of year head smells and feels, because the top of babies heads is one of the most magical smells ever. I dream of your Daddy holding you while the three of us are snuggled up in the bed watching TV.  I have dreams of bath time, feeding time, play time, and just you and me time. I dream about your nursery, and rocking you in the chair by the window. I dream of your smile, your nose, and your larger than life feet. I dream of your perfection and wonder why it was taken from me.

Sometimes my dreams are ugly. I dream of the hospital where I went in full of baby and left with empty arms. I dream of the moment they cut me open and how that felt. I dream of the words that I heard in the OR, and how mute I felt in that moment. I dream about the moment they said, "Get it out!" in the OR, and remembering how mad I was that "it" was a "he" and his name was "Jackson". How dare they? Once your mother, always your mother I suppose. I dream about the nurses who helped me, and how they did not understand either.  I dream about how lonely it was at night in the hospital and how I cried all night. I dream about hearing you cry in the middle of the night, and when I wake not only are you not here, but the house is quiet. I look for a baby monitor on my bedside table, instead I find a glass of water, a phone and a People magazine. Where did that cry come from? It seemed so real. It was like you were really here. I am here looking for you and I cannot find you. I hear you cry and I know you need me. I cry out for you. Can you hear me Jackson? Where are you?


Dreams are where I find you, hold you and love you. Dreams are also a way that my mind is attempting to process the mountain of things that happened that day and everyday since. Good, bad or ugly I am thankful for these dreams. In many ways, the dreams are better than reality. After all, I have always been a dreamer.

I know that I will dream of you often, and for the rest of my life. I am good with that. That is our place and space, and I will always find you there. At the end of even the toughest dream, I still see you. Somewhere in that messy pile of unprocessed memories, is your beautiful face. 


We love you so much, Jackson Neil.

Until the next dream.....

Love,

Mom and Dad

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
High above the chimney tops,
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
High above the chimney tops,
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

One of my favorite songs, with a memory jar deposit. I have seen 3 different rainbows this month. Did you know that babies that come after loss are called "rainbow babies"? Well, I think seeing 3 rainbows in a weeks time is enough of a sign to these weary parents that..."the dreams you dare to dream, really do come true". Maybe a rainbow baby is in our future. Maybe the plan is starting to make sense. Maybe good things come to those who wait. Maybe the dreams will become a new reality and turn around this nightmare. Maybe the most beautiful and perfect baby is being prepared for us. Maybe Jackson has it all under control.

Somewhere over this rainbow is where you'll find me. Dreaming. Loving. Wishing. Hoping. Praying.

We love you Jackson Neil DeLoach.

Thank You for this rainbow and Thank You for the promise that it brings!

JND and Rainbow Babies. Good stuff right there. We want all of it and then some. Someday, somewhere over the rainbow we will have all of it. For now, we have our angel, a lot of hope, and now some rainbows.

Love,
Emily and Russ