Dear Andrew,

Well we survived mother's day.  What a weekend.

You are always my first thought when I wake up and my last thought before I fall asleep and fill my thoughts throughout the day.  But this past weekend your loss overwhelmed me.  Everything was as emotional as it was in the beginning.  My first mother's day without you. 

I was thinking about last year and how we were less than two months until your due date at this time.  How your father got me a card and signed it from you (not your name as we hadn't picked that yet).  I can't say that a year ago I ever expected myself to be in this position.  I pictured myself with a bouncing lively ten month old little boy.  How different our lives have turned out.  I should be complaining about whatever it is that ten month olds do.  You should be wreaking havoc everywhere you go and filling out lives with so much love and joy.

Instead this past weekend was filled with so many tears and so much sadness.  There were a lot more tears than there have been in awhile.  I came home during lunch Friday and grabbed the mail.  We had two mother's day cards from your dad's family.  Which was so sweet of them and made me feel glad that they remembered you and I on that day.  But it opened the flood gates.  I was already emotional from your brother's appointment the prior day and this just sent me over the edge.  Hysterical to the point I wasn't sure if I could go back to work.  Somehow I did and made it through the rest of the day but your father got round two on Friday night.  He is used to it at this point but I feel bad that he has to deal with it so often. 

Sunday was spent at your grave and I brought your freshly cleaned teddy bear back to your box.  That box is the only thing we can concentrate on when we are up there.  I think it's the only thing that helps us hold it together when we visit you.  It gives us something to concentrate on.  That box is the only way I get to express my love to you to the outside world.  It's my little piece of you that I get to smother with attention and trinkets and love.  So that was how I spent Sunday.  Cleaning your box and showing the world that I loved you.

Never at any point last year did I think a day like mother's day would now involve a trip to your grave.  Never did I think I'd be spending my first proper mother's day crying at your grave.  Mourning your loss as fresh and raw as if it was June 8th all over again.

This weekend exhausted me.  Grief is exhausting.  Missing you is exhausting.  We both miss you so much and it's these little days that others take for granted that hammer home what we are missing.  The most important thing in our lives.  You.