November 1, 2015

Dear Will,

There is a sense of calm this morning as I visualize flipping the calendar to November. Since 2011, October has become a long and sad month and each year it continues to beat me up emotionally. We honored your birthday on the 14^th in our own beautiful way and found ourselves busy both physically and mentally while we hoped and prayed for a positive outcome for Pa after he suffered a heart attack. He was airlifted to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary where he spent most of the last three weeks of October. It was a stressful time for all of us and I prayed extra hard that my Dad would make it through the open-heart surgery that was the only option to repair his heart. The unspoken and underlying possibility that Pa might join you in heaven weighed heavily on me, Will, and though there were moments where I wished I could trade places with him I was grateful and relieved when he was able to return home and begin his road to recovery and his second chance at life. October became a double whammy month of emotions and today I finally feel like I can breathe again.

After spending weeks “hoping” I’m now back to spending my days “wishing”. Wishing that the outcome of the 22nd day of May 2011 were different. I wish that you were here sitting on the couch beside me right now with a pillowcase full of Halloween candy and a mouth full of chocolate. I wish your shoes were at the front door with mismatched socks “sort of in the vicinity” and that your jacket was draped/thrown over the stair banister with the arms pulled inside out. Yes. Inside out. The inside out thing was definitely a Will thing.

When I’d do laundry I’d cuss and swear while sorting the clothes, annoyed that all of your t-shirts were inside out. And so I’d either turn them right side in before I’d toss them into the washing machine or before I folded them when they came out of the dryer… the extra time it took kind of drove me crazy. I remember the day I decided to leave them inside out and folded them that way thinking I was so clever and that giving you a taste of your own medicine would surely teach you a lesson, that it’d drive you crazy — but not only did you appear to not care even one bit I think you were completely oblivious to the whole inside out thing. That day, Will, changed the way I did laundry and to this day if there are t-shirts (or socks) that are inside out I leave them like that. Ha! I think. Ha! And like you, no one really seems to care that they are inside out. Oh my, the stuff that drives a mother crazy…

I wish you were here with us every single day. Before your passing I used to consciously think about what I’d wish for if I was given a wish and now all I wish for is you. You with your tousled hair and your big feet. Maybe with socks, maybe without. You singing out LOUD to the music on your iPod with your ear buds in and me reminding you to remove them from your ears. You, Willy, loving Halloween because of all the candy and the chance to dress up and be silly with your friends. I would be the happiest human being on earth if the one wish I wished more than anything could come true. And even though I know it’s not possible I continue to wish that it were different.

Love you, Willy. Like an inside out bus and a big wish.

Momxo