I've done a lot of thinking about families. What they look like. What the word means. The latest census Canada report describes how families come in more shapes or sizes than ever before. An increasing number are single parent.
I have no problem looking at other single parent households and seeing a family unit. But I just can't do it for my own.
Maybe its the black cloud I always see hanging over our heads. Maybe its the empty chair at the head of the table. Whenever I look at images of Gavin and me, things just don't feel complete. We are not, in my eyes, a family.
We were one. A lifetime ago.
I just want what so many people around me seem to have.
A couple walking hand in hand.
A mother and father holding their infant daughter or son.
A child holding their infant brother or sister for the first time.
Kids fighting together. Playing together. Just being together.
Chairs full around the dinner table with lively conversation about the day.
And when the kids are tucked up tight, mom and dad side by side on the couch. Someone to snuggle with as the evenings turn cool.
June Clever-ish... Perhaps. And it doesn't need to be that way for everyone. But it needs to be that way for me. It could have been that way for me.
It should have been that way for me.
Its all I ever wanted.
Like I said, there are families like that all around me. I'm at that age where that vision is coming true for so many. My Facebook newsfeed is full of such images. Acquaintances are full of such descriptions.
And then I come home to my son - whom I love dearly. But we are not a family. We're incomplete. Something is missing.
It will always be missing.....
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