Something has been weighing heavily on my mind lately.

It’s about Matthew.

My friend, Kim, lost her 8-month-old exactly one month to the day before Matthew died. (Same year and everything.) Around their house, her daughter, Emma, is a daily part of conversation between her and her kids and husband. They all mention her as easily and as often as the other family members still living.

That is not how it is at my house.

It’s not that we don’t love Matthew as much as Kim and her family loves Emma, we do.

So much.

We just…don’t talk about him a lot.

I’m not sure why it is.

We don’t really do anything regarding him a lot. Visits to the cemetery are rarer are rarer, it seems. I used to change his decorations every season and holiday. And when that didn’t happen we ALWAYS went Memorial Day and his anniversary. We didn’t even make it there for his anniversary this year. (Which hurts my heart to type.)

While we may not make it to where he is buried for everything, we DO talk about and remember him on his birthday and on the anniversary of his death and we ALWAYS remember him at Thanksgiving and especially Christmas. And weirdly, it is often the time I feel the most emotional about him. I enjoy the holidays again, but man…is there ever raw heartache and tears during the Christmas season for me. It is always tinged with a melancholy and aching, much as I love it.  I wonder if that will ever go away. In some ways I hope it doesn’t. If that makes any sense.

It can be good to talk about him but honestly it can also be very hard. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like we’ve all put our grief in a bag and it’s this sack of weights with Matthew’s name on it. We’ve built up enough muscle and fortitude to each carry that sack around with us individually, but sometimes when he is brought up it’s like everyone’s sacks are combined and it can just be too much to take.  (You’d think I would be better at that after 7-years than I am.)

We DO talk about him, he is not a forbidden subject at all, but as far as talking about him daily and in casual conversation, no…we don’t.

We only have one photo on display of him, and it’s our family portrait. (We don’t really have a lot of family photos displayed. Our house is tiny and I own a lot of art. :) )

James and Christopher were 7 and 4 when he died, and they remember him.

Butterlump doesn’t.

It’s been worrying me lately.

How to teach Aaron about Matthew.

Some say it will happen naturally, but I am not convinced of this. Like I said…it’s rare we talk about him. I write about him much more often than I speak about him, and I don’t even really write about him that often.  Many who know me, don’t even know I’ve had a child pass away.

I want Matthew to be important to Aaron.  I’d love it if he loved him, but can you love someone you’ve never actually met? Especially when they only lived 108-short days?

Jonathan says he’s too young, at 18-months to even worry about it, but hello…this is ME we are talking about. It’s ridiculously important to me, but I feel ill-at-ease and inadequate about how to go about it. (And really, I could probably Google information about this but wading through pages and pages of web advice concerning the death of children makes me curl up in a ball.)

I’m not sure what I’m looking for with this post.

Advice?

Comfort?

Links to funny cat videos to make this place a little lighter?

I just want to feel better, so here I am, doing what I do best-writing out my stream of thought about a topic I’m having difficulty with.

Because like I said, this is ridiculously important to me.

But…

I just don’t know if I can bring myself to talk about him more than I already do.

Even for Aaron.

Which makes me feel awful.

:(

This is my dad, Robert.

(Handsome, no?)

You may call him “Bob” if you are either a friendly or one of his children.

(My mother’s name is LaRee.)

(You may call her “Larry”, if, and only if, you are my eldest brother, Rhett.)

(My mother nicknamed Rhett, “Ski”, so I figure that it’s sort of justified payback, you know?)

(Poor Rhett. He isn’t even a pair of skis, just a sad, solitary single “ski” that smacks of some poor, unskilled and defeated schmuck losing one of his skis on the ski lift.)

(Rhett’s nickname for me is “Whiner Number One” (“Whiner” for short) so don’t feel TOO sorry for him, y’all.)

(We won’t even go INTO what my sister, Linny, nicknamed me.)

(“PEE”.)

(No short, just…”PEE”)

(ACK! I TOLD YOU! NOW I HAVE TO CARRY MY SHAME WITH ME!!!)

(Although, I did nickname my brother “Bradley Brown Burrito Socks”)

(And I might have gone through a phase of a solid 2-years where I called my twin sister “Pizza Hut”.)

(So, ya know…don’t feel too sorry for me, either.)

(You know, sometimes it takes me actually seeing things like this in black and white to realize JUST HOW FREAKING WEIRDTASTIC MY FAMILY IS.)

(I had to come from somewhere, right?)

(Right.)

(Sigh.)

Where was I?

Oh, yes..this is my dad, Robert.

See a resemblance to anyone you know?

(I am so torn on this.)

(Because you realize if you say “Yes”, while going ‘yay’ for family resemblance, it might totally reinforce the suspicion that I would probably make a better looking dude than a girl.)

(Although, I suppose this trait has helped in my theater/opera experiences.)

(I’ve played quite a few men on stage.)

(And, really, it’s probably a good thing Jonathan and I don’t have any girls, as with our genetics combined she’d have to repeatedly tell telemarketers that she wasn’t her father and I’d probably have to help her wax her back before homecoming .)

(Not that I am against the fluffy and furry people amongst us, I’m not.)

(Which would be ironic as I was accused of being “anti-bald people’ just last week.)

(I’m doing it again, aren’t I?)

(Sorry!)

Ehem…

THIS IS MY DAD, ROBERT. (Deja vu, anyone?)

And today is Veteran’s Day.

And as you can tell from the studly Navy uniform, my father is a Veteran.

He is also the author of a stream of emails to me that I am ever increasingly convinced I should publish online. When one gets emails from ones father that document his desire, at times, to have a lot full of “Charlie Brown Christmas Trees” due to the “grave inner conflict” he feels about having trees in his yard as they create piles of leaves in the Autumn, and begins, “What a quandary!” then continues to include paragraphs like this:

“Understand, I don’t dislike trees. Admittedly, they are a boon to the real estate market when “mature trees” are a definite asset.  They shroud around the home as deterrents to heat stroke. And they do help contain the electric bill in summer. Those are definite pluses.

And yet, I am not a tree-hugger, either.”

SEE? I am sure if they HAD emoticons back when he was early in his journalism/editor career he would have TOTALLY used emoticons, too. (I like to think he’s easy on the caps key because it was just too much work on those old uprights.)

:)

My father served in the Navy from 1951 until 1955.

HE VOLUNTEERED FOR THE NAVY DURING THE KOREAN WAR WHEN HE WAS SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD.

Did you catch those key words?

VOLUNTEERED.

WAR.

SEVENTEEN.

That?

Is just damn impressive, people.

My dad’s Navy stories are the best.

Although some of them were not so best-like.

Like how he was scrubbing black boot marks off the white bed rails at boot camp and trying not to cry while they played, ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’.

Or, like how he worked out for a million hours on board the ship (between long shifts of back breaking work) and yet never gained a lot of muscle. (I KNEW my toothpick calves came from somewhere!)

Or, like the 1950′s military version of sex-ed. (Which seems to mainly consist of the ONE guy in the world you would NOT want to have talk about ANYTHING to do with the topic proceeding to tell so many horror stories and showing so many graphic educational films about VD that I’m surprised anyone even THOUGHT about doing anything with their manly bits on shore leave for fear of it shriveling up, falling off, turning into mythical pixie dust and being scattered by the south seas winds.) (At least that is totally how it seems to me, but who knows? Maybe the Navy version of “uphills both ways and barefoot in the snow” is all about how many VD movies they were forced to watch in bootcamp.)

The Navy was tough but my dad stuck it (and being stationed at Guam) out.

And I have endless admiration for him for doing that.

Lots of love, Pa.

Ya done good.

##

I know this post has been a bit silly and today is a very serious, meaningful day. I usually write very meaningful posts on Veteran’s and Memorial Day, and planned on writing all sorts of awesome things about my dad, but I this is what came out when I sat down to write. The day strikes a bit close to home this year and humor is how I cope.

On a serious note–I have lots of loved ones, friends and family that are, or have been, military. Many mean the world to me and I personally feel a huge debt to everyone who has sacrificed and served on behalf of our nation.

Thank you from the bottom of my silly, rambling, heart.

xo,

Loralee

Sunday was my birthday.

I turned 36.

I wasn’t the only one to turn 36 that day.

She did, too.

She’s my identical twin sister.

She’s been around as long as I can remember.

And, obviously, much before that.

We don’t talk.

Ever.

For reasons too private and painful to get into here, we have always had a very difficult relationship.

Very.

Though we did have ‘a language’, we have never been the best friends that society pressured us to be.

It can be tough being an identical twin.

The unintended pressure from society is huge.

You’re thought of as a unit that should dress alike, look alike, think alike, be alike, and be rooted magically in each other’s psyche and soul because you share DNA and parked in the same womb-space for 9 months.

You’re not an individual to most people.

And if you chafe against that expectation or don’t fit it, it can get rough.

It doesn’t help when you get birthday gifts like a Hello Kitty notebook with the declaration that, “it’s for both of you”.

Whee.

But those are things that are small and trivial.

Our issues are neither small, nor trivial.

It’s like a never-ending competition that I’m not even participating in and certainly didn’t sign up for.

We have struggled with our relationship as long as I can remember.

Then my son, Matthew, died.

Between things that happened during that time and our past, it pretty much broke our already-fragile-relationship into so many pieces they really can not ever be put back together again.

Even if it all the stuff over the years could be mended, I’m not sure either of us would even want a relationship at this point.

Still…

36 years.

On Sunday I thought of her.

I thought about us.

I sat staring at my phone.

Wondering.

Vacillating.

Torn.

I didn’t pick it up to dial.

Neither did she.