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15 Years?

 Hi Aaron,

You'd be 15 today. Well into your teenage years, likely driving next year. If you'd have grown up anything like your little brother has you'd have been so into cars. If you'd have turned out anything like me, you'd already be trying to figure out any way possible to not have to drive your parent's car when you turned 16, and be failing miserably.

15. That's a big year. You'd definitely be in high school, probably have some really terrible taste in music that your mom and I would be trying really hard to appreciate on your behalf. I like to think you'd have followed my superior example and be taking the first tiny steps towards playing drums with some friends in a band, maybe learned guitar from your Uncle Matt, or somehow gained your Aunt Sarah's singing gift. Music's always been pretty big in our family, so I imagine you'd have found some gift for it somewhere.

Or maybe service, or theology and philosophy would be your thing. Maybe the written word, something I always played with but never committed myself to. Or science, or baseball, or any of the other things that I, your mother, or any of your other family (nuclear and extended) find interesting or to be their callings. That's one of the most beautifully tragic things about losing you - we have the freedom to imagine any life we can conjure for you, but we'll never be able to know if our imaginings have any kernel of truth to them.

I miss you, Aaron. Every day. Most days are good - great - even. Your little brother is so amazing. He's incredibly active, and involved in so many things - baseball, swimming, running - that most days just fly by. But every day, there's something small, something mostly innocuous, that reminds me of you - that brings to mind a moment of your short life, of the efforts we've made to keep your memory alive, or of the grief that your mom and I fought so long and so hard to not swallow us both up.  Sometimes it's watching your grandparents with your brother or your cousins - and wishing I could've seen you with them, see the smiles they would've brought you, and you them.  Sometimes it's a song on the radio, or a passage from a book, or just something I love that makes me think, "I would love to be able to share this with Aaron."

I don't want you think that Mom and Dad are still moping around. We're not. Like I said, most days are really, really good. Life has been strangely kind to us, on the whole. We have your brother, we have (for the most part) our health, we have our dog Luna, we have a house to live in, cars to drive, jobs to provide for us, our faith to sustain us, and friends and family that have stood by us. But you're still missed, Aaron. You always will be. There's always going to be a hole in my heart where you belong, and all the beautiful, happy days from here until the end of time aren't going to fill that hole in; the hole remains so that I can appreciate the contrast between everything else and my missing you.

Bye Aaron. If the pattern remains true, and this blog is still around in 2026, I'll be checking back here in on your 20th birthday, but as always, I'll be talking to you plenty between now and then. Happy Birthday, pal. I'll leave you with a song that I discovered in the last couple years that really hits home. The songwriter absolutely knows what I've been through, and while the song's written for a lost son a little younger than you, I think you'll get the idea. 😏


Love,
Dad

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