The It Factor

Do you remember the movie City Slickers?  Billy Crystal and gang running around trying to pretend they were cowboys?  Looking for the meaning of life in the midst of a mid-life crisis.  The search for that "one thing".  The raison d'etre, as you would have it.

Well, I'm in my mid-life crisis.  I was thrown into it, far before I was ready.  Just as my life was beginning.  But here I am....  My one thing has changed through the years.  Let me introduce you to my most recent one:

He stands approximately three feet tall.  His favourite words are "I do it" and "No".  He loves Wiggles and Thomas the Train.  And cheese.  Lots of cheese.  And he is my reason for breathing.  I suppose I was one of the lucky ones.  When Kurt died I couldn't throw myself off a cliff.  I couldn't crawl into bed and never get out.  Trust me, I tried.  But instead there were diapers to change, bottles to make, and toes to tickle.  Instead of the silence there were coos and, with time, words.  Instead of the emptiness there was him.  Raising Gavin on my own hasn't been easy.  In fact, aside from burying my husband it may be the hardest thing I have ever done.  But I am doing it.  I said early on that taking care of him would take care of me.  So far, that is the case.  And as Gavin grows, so does the bond between us.  As much as I try to be strong for him, I always know there is someone to wipe my tears when i cry... even if he doesn't understand them.

I won't say its the perfect solution.  He's a bittersweet reminder of what I had - and what I lost.  Gavin cramps my grief.  He makes it hard to cry when i need to cry.  Hard to address my own needs when he is rather demanding.  In fact in many ways because of him my grief has intensified.  I'm not only grieving my losses... I'm grieving the relationships my son has been deprived of.  The father-son things he will never have.   I worry constantly that my own issues will affect the man he is to become.  But amongst all that, I am proud of the boy who is rising from our family's ashes.  I would give anything on this earth to have Kurtis back with us... except perhaps the boy our baby has become.  He is so much like his daddy in many ways.  And while I'm sure many of these will change as he grows older and becomes his own person - his daddy's short influence waning on his hopefully long and happy life - he will always carry a little of his dad within.  And I will continue to do everything to raise that little man in a manner that is true to both his parents.  I hope I make his daddy proud.  I'm sure Gavin will.  

He already does.