Loving Landan

This week is the first time I’m really feeling the loss of Landan. Logically, I know he’s been gone for 18 days.  But between the fog of trying to prepare everything for his celebration, my insomnia and severe sleep deprivation, everything just felt surreal. I’m sure it was complicated by the fact that Andy and I would switch off time at the hospital, so it wasn’t abnormal for me to be home with the other 4 kids.  Again, logically, Andy being home with me should have helped reinforce reality, but he was also back at work, so through the days it was just me and the 4 kids.  

Last week, prior to his service, as I was frantically looking for one of the kid’s shirts to wear that day, I cleaned out my car.  In doing that, I went ahead and removed Landan’s car seat.  That was the first thing I had done towards the process of removing all the things around the house we no longer needed available.

For his service, we printed some 8×10 pictures to display.  Two of those are now hanging in our house.  In our hallway, we have a collage that had previously been a collection of pictures of the kids.  It is now designated as a collage of Landan.  He smiles down at me in every room I visit frequently.  It puts a smile on my face, while simultaneously making my body recognize the ache of his absence. 

Every ounce of my being longs for his little body to be next to mine in a carrier as I go about the day caring for his siblings.  There are a lot of thoughts of things shouldn’t be this way – they should look like this instead.  The tiniest of things bring on tears and I can’t seem to kick the sadness.  Even as I am laughing and playing with the other kids, there’s an air of sadness in my heart.  I haven’t experienced this since the first time or two I switched off time at the hospital with Andy. It’s much heavier and more prevalent.  Maybe this is just what happiness looks like now.