9 Months Later...

Hello Angel-
275 days have now passed since I held you in my arms - although it still feels like a lifetime. I don't know how I am still here, still breathing. I miss you so much. These 9 months have brought such change to my life, everything would be so different if only you were here. I know I shouldn't let my mind take me there, but it does. I want to feel happiness again...the way that I felt when you were here. Yet, now everything is tinged with sadness. Every month I would have watched you grow would have brought a celebration...now I feel as if there is nothing to celebrate, nothing to look forward to. I just want to be with you! I want to hold you. These aching, empty arms will never really be full again, will they? It's the worst feeling in the world when I'm laying there and I am trying to remember how you felt in my arms and I can't. I can't remember, Kyler! I can't feel you there anymore. And my arms...they just ache. The physical ache is almost unbearable at times. I would do anything to feel you again, cuddled up in my arms and laying on my chest. I wish I could go back. As painful as it was to see that you were gone, you felt so perfect in my arms.
There were a lot of firsts during these past 9 months...my first Thanksgiving without you, first Christmas, first New Year, first Mother's Day, first Birthday...and now for some reason, the 9 month mark really hits me. It is the last month in which I had prepared for you. It is a bit hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot...
When I was pregnant with you, I always day-dreamed about you as a newborn, and then as an infant but very rarely did I picture you being older, like going to pre-school, or going on dates or getting married one day…don’t get me wrong, I thought about those things too, but I was mostly focused on the first handful of months of your life. While I spent the last few weeks before you came, buying things for you at the store, the 'oldest' clothing, little toys and items that I purchased for you were all labeled 9 months. Who knows if you would have already outgrown all that stuff by now anyway (after all, you would have been momma's little chunk) but as I held up those onesies, little shoes, sleepers…I dreamed of what you would look like in them, what you would be doing, how much you would have grown and changed during those first 9 months and all the places we would have gone and the things we would have done together. I stood there in the store thinking, “I can’t believe that one day you will actually be this big!” I could hardly wait, Kyler. I know it may seem crazy, but not having anything else 'new' in the midst of your things for when you were older than 9 months seems like another painful good-bye. Am I finally going crazy? It's like if I still had things for you that you would have needed as you grew, it's like you would still be here with me. Now I have nothing new for you and I feel like our time, or my dreams of my life with you, has died…again…or just that ‘something’ has ended. I don't know, I really just can’t explain it. I don’t know why, it was like I only saw you through 9 months and now I just don’t know what dreams to reference. I can't go through your things and touch anything that you would be using now...everything would be old, used and too small for you. I wish I could stop time for a moment, just to catch my breath. I can’t make it stop though and I have to keep trudging through. People have moved on in their lives even more now than before, and it is even more hurtful for me to watch. Don’t they know how much I am still hurting? Can’t they recognize the lies I tell when they ask how I am doing? If I'm doing better? Do they not realize that it has been 9 months today…9 MONTHS since I lost you and how it feels just like yesterday that we said goodbye?
I am trying to look forward to the future though, the best way that I know how. Your daddy will be home in just a few months, I have to stay strong for him. Maybe once he gets back things will begin to feel a bit more normal. You know, if you were still here, we'd be back home in Idaho getting ready for daddy to fly out to us this fall. Our anniversary is coming up and I had planned for you & I to get our pictures taken together to send out to the ship, and now I don't even feel like celebrating. Nothing feels right without you here. It's hard to be happy when you're gone and I have to, somehow, live my life without you.
Thank you for finally visiting me in a dream the other night, although it wasn't quite how I planned to see you for the first time, it was so breathtaking to be able to see your face again. Please keep those dreams coming, I need to feel you around me.
I love you, I miss you, I can't wait to hold you again. Stay close to me, Ky.
xoxoxo Momma