Your Child...

Our baby boy is four today.  The baby you helped bring into the world is no longer that infant child you last cast eyes on the day you died.  He's his own little person, his own little man, carrying your genetics but shaped mostly by his mother's hand and the world in which he lives.

I wish you could have known him.  I wish you could have heard him giggle when he gets tickled under the arm.  Or watched him sing and dance in the middle of the living room floor.  I wish you could have been taught the name of every train in Sodor, and got down on your knees to play.  Been subject to his pout, his snarl, but also his smile.  I wish you could have felt his arms around your neck.  I wish you were his best friend instead of me...

I know the boy I live with is not the same boy that would have been had you been alive to mould him.  But I wish you could have had the time to get to know each other just the same.  And I wish I had been allowed to meet that boy too - the one who would grow up with his daddy to play with, to spend time with.  I wish our child had been allowed to blossom into the child he was supposed to be.

If you are out there, I know you are proud of him.  I know you love him.  I just wish you could have felt those ways here - with him.  With us.

I want to say our son will grow up just fine.  That he will be okay without his daddy's hand to hold.  But the truth is I just don't know.  There's no way to know if things will turn out better or worse.  If things will turn out okay.  All I can do is hold our son tight enough for the both of us, trust that instinct that I hold deep within, and continue to raise him in a manner that is both right for me, and would make you proud.

We have a wonderful little boy, Kurt.  And I'm trying, despite the bumpy road we have been given, to do good - both to him, and to you.  And no matter how brief your hand held him, your influence remains.  Regardless of who raises him, he is always one half you.  There are days I look at him and marvel at the strength of genetics.  Little things he does, little ways he dos them, that do nothing but remind me of you.

I know you didn't plan for your legacy to last thins long without you, but thank you for giving me, and trusting me to keep, your legacy well.  I'll do the best I can.  Because I know he is a pretty special little man.  With a very special dad.

You have a hell of a kid, Kurt.  And he's gonna give his mom a hell of a ride.  He's the only thing in this world I have ever loved as much as I love you.

Thank you.