my boy with the big brown eyes...

my sister in law left yesterday
after having spent the night with us...
she is heading across canada with her 2 baby twins...
she was just home for a quick visit.

9 is heartbroken...gut wrenchingly heartbroken.
and there is nothing i can do to make it better.

he had to come home from school
because he was so upset....he emailed her this...
this is {9} Hi MISS YOU SO MUCH!!!!!
and then this...{in which his plaintive sadness makes me
want to cry every time i read it.}
????why did you not replay from my last message??plese say hi to every one wendi i love you

i feel so tender and bruised when i think of him
being this sad...and that there is nothing i can do
but be here for him and hug him and hold him...
and write this to his aunt, so she has a bit of a
heads up as to what he is thinking...

hi wendi... not sure when you will get this,
i know you guys are pretty busy with the move and all
hopefully everything is going all right...

i just wanted to let you know ahead of time
that you have left behind one heartbroken little boy...
he cried countless times last night... especially at bed time...
after you left, he sat on the chair and sighed
and said "this sucks...everything reminds me of the babies...
that reflection on the ceiling, cause they loved looking at that...
that chair...cause that's where a. sat before he left...
even the tv, cause m. watches tv!"

at bedtime, i laid down beside him
and he cried saying that he couldn't read his book
because he read it to you...
he couldn't decide what he missed most about you
but then decided it was your jokes...he said you were pretty funny.
he asked me what i missed most about you.
he was mad that you couldn't just live here...
he thought that if you would just ask the old man who lives next door
if you could live in his house, the old man would probably say yes
and then he could see you every day...

he does not want to cross the bridge to visit you but might...
if that is the only way...

when i told him the hurt would be a little less every day,
he said "no...the last time she left, it took me like two weeks to get over it"

it started off that it was the babies
he was missing and remembering but last night, it was all about you...
the light you gave him,
how you looked at the nightlight with him
(he goes out and turns on the night light every now and then and does a big sigh...),
his book, the pool (because he said you loved to swim...)....

loving someone can be so hard.
that is a difficult lesson to learn.
{or to watch somebody you love learn...}