That Old Familiar Ache

      
 
     As many of you who follow this blog know, the end of November is the time in which Daniel passed from Earth.  One moment, he was happy and planning to go Christmas shopping, and the next moment, he no longer resided in his warm and pleasant flesh suit.   Immediate CPR and epinephrine injection did not change that, and in our case, when the AED arrived, it didn't either.
               Daniel's departure was now four years ago.  I find that as long as we stay pretty busy, we survive with a minimum of griefbursts.   Daniel would not want us to spend the holidays grieving him, and so we try very hard not to.
                With the new book What I Learned from Daniel out, I have been doing fairly well, until last evening.   Our daughter who now has her own home comes over to visit fairly often to see us, use our lightning fast internet, and to progressively and gradually move some of her more fragile things to her new house.  While she was doing this, she found a paper that Daniel had made for her one year for her birthday.
It said:
                           Happy Birthday Stephanie

                        With love from Daniel     (aka Danny-Pants)  which is what she called him when he was little.

Beneath that he had drawn several animal figures, and they were quite good.


         I don't know that I had ever seen this drawing/card he had made for her before.  Most days, I deal with the fact that our youngest son lives in Heaven, and we are here to finish out the clock.  Seeing this lovingly written paper to his sister with the drawings, made me yearn to see him, hug him and tell him how good the drawings were.  I felt as if I had empty arms.

         Daniel, if you read the blog from your vantage point, the card and the drawings are very good.   Your sister plans to frame it.  She hasn't yet decided whether she will frame it and mount it to stay in her room here, or bring it to the new house.   Since she comes here for holidays etc. I can see the case for putting it up here.   Yes, today I have that old familiar ache.