I am nearly silent, sitting here after a delectable meal, letting The Grief continue its draining effect. It is Leo’s birthday; earlier today I wrote the thank you cards to Joel’s NICU nurses – a job I have been putting off for over a month. These women, they deserve every ounce of praise I can muster, but it was so hard, finding the right words to thank them without completely falling to pieces remembering why I know them. And even harder thinking how badly I wish I could tell them they helped Joel graduate from the NICU, how badly I would love to reunite with them holding a healthy little grinning boy. But that is not the truth, and the truth and The Grief, they come hand in hand to haunt me tonight.

Dinner was at a steak house, where the service is impeccable and the filet melts under your butter knife. I look over at Leo and smile, “I am so sorry there’s no baby on your birthday honey, I so wanted that for you”. The tears fill my eyes but I force myself to keep smiling. “You have nothing to be sorry about” he says. And he means it, I know he does but I am suffocating under the unbearable load of The Grief. We make small talk with his parents across the table, the lightning in Florida is dangerous, this area has changed so much since they lived here. I smile and nod at all the right times, when I want to scream and run and rip the heart right out of my chest, so unbearable is this misery without our baby. He belongs here, he was supposed to be here today. I hate that it is Leo’s birthday is without him, I hate that we can just up and go to dinner. What I wouldn’t give to be inconvenienced by packing up our infant son, by a crying baby in a nice restaurant.

The effort to keep my shoulders up, to force the air in and out of my lungs while being crushed by The Grief is almost more than I can take. I wonder if our server or the other patrons can see it, I feel  branded by this taxing pressure, this overwhelming feeling that I could be turned inside out at any moment, so big is the hole in my heart. There have been so many good days lately, days full of peace and hope, and today they all seem lost. I miss him so much. The Greif has caught me, and is taking its revenge. I am drowning in it, I can’t see anything but Joel and his absence. Tonight should have been a night of laughter and lightheartedness, but I am dragged so far down by this heavy, heavy burden that all I can do is smile at Leo, tell him I love him, and pray that I might do better by him.

It is dark and heavy and late. The little dog sleeps by my side as I type, Leo waits for me in bed. Our bed where Joel should have been sleeping, waking us with all the squeals and grunts of a newborn, and demands for clean diapers and meals from Momma. The Greif is just sitting on me now, waiting for me to find an escape, but I know that none exists. My son will never come to chase it away, he is gone. He is where The Grief has been banished, but I, I am where it lives – ugly and heavy and dark on a celebration day. It is a thief and a murderer, easily roused by reminders and joy, coming to stifle and suffocate, tying me to a world without my son, loosed only in the moments when I can see past this life. I just want to shake myself free enough to wish Joel’s Daddy an honest Happy Birthday.