Dear Andrew,

You've been on my mind more than usual lately.  The thought of you is constantly dancing in the back of my head.  I can't shake this feeling that life seems so unfair.  I still desperately want you here.  It's a feeling that I doubt will ever go away.

I've made peace with the fact you aren't here (for the most part) but at the same time I've become bitter as well that you aren't here.  I'm angry that we had to lose you.  I'm angry that we had to experience losing you.  It's tainted so many things since your death.  And I'm frustrated that most people don't understand.  I guess you could say I have a million different feelings that are going a million different directions when it comes to you and losing you.  Your death changed our lives so much.  It impacted every corner of our lives and they will never be the same again.  And I'm angry about that.  And slightly bitter.

I love you so much and still want to talk about you all the time.  I find myself slipping you into conversation just to prove that you did exist.  Just so I can somehow speak your name out loud.  But then it doesn't change anything.  And I go back to being slightly bitter because most of the people who I mention your name around become uncomfortable.

Since your brother has arrived people keep referring to him as my first.  The first child, the first grandchild.  But your brother isn't the first!  He's the second.  You are the first and always will be.  I don't understand how people can just brush your short life under the carpet and pretend you don't exist.  I guess the difference for them is they didn't spend 41 weeks bonding with you.  They didn't hold your 8 pound 15 ounce lifeless body.  They didn't look at their perfect tiny baby and cry with such an overwhelming sadness that they thought they would be consumed by it.  And I was consumed by it.  IT took a long time to emerge from that fog.  The fog that still envelops me from time to time.

As I sit here thinking about you I am still overwhelmingly sad.  It's not the type of sadness where I can't get out of bed but more like a heavy presence that makes the world a bit less colorful.  And that's exactly it.  The world has become a little bit duller to me since you left it.