Dear Terrence,

I'm sorry that I didn't write for such a long time. You know that I was thinking of you every day, but your grandma and grandpa came to see me, and then I went back to work. I figured that mourning you would be easier if I could just find enough to occupy myself. With everything I asked myself to do, it was hard to write to you, to line up all the words neatly and tell you how life was going without you.

Really, it's just been hard.

But your daddy's been asleep since 7:50, and it seems like a good time to talk.

Maybe you would be proud of me. I do my best to act like I'm okay, and some days I actually am. But some days my coworkers catch me with my eyes full of tears, and I tell them it's just allergies. (Some of the people at work are new, and I'm not sure that they know about you.) Some days your dad catches me crying in bed alone when I'm supposedly reading. Just Sunday, we walked past the baby section at Target, past the little pairs of blue shoes, and even though I tried really hard not to cry, I did. Standing there made me think of how much I was looking forward to picking out little outfits for you, how I don't get to do that now. Your father was so good. He just held me while I sobbed (ugly, messy sobs) and he even ended up making me laugh.

I don't know why, but I miss you more now than I did at first. I remember taking a class on death and dying when I was in college and learning all of the alleged stages of grief. For a large part of the last month, I think I fell accidentally into denial; it seemed like you might have been someone else's little boy--some very close friend whose pain I could understand but not really feel. But more and more, this terrible emptiness opens itself in my gut to remind me how much you were my baby, my loss.

I like knowing that the weeping cherry we planted for you is growing green, new leaves in the backyard. I was afraid that it would make me cry to see it, that it would be a reminder of how you would never grow. But whenever I see it, I feel this calmness creep through me. At first, I was so afraid that it would turn brown and die, but when I see the tree doing well, it makes me think that the future might have something bright in store for me after all.