I feel like I can almost see you, running through the late sunshine, laughter in your dark eyes. You’re brown and lithe, hair falling forward into long lashes. You must look like that because the kids’ mirror tells me that’s the Alves Shutt model. I can imagine you playing crazy with Cyrus, finding comfort in Felicity, Matthias showing you all the treasure trove of knowledge older brothers magically amass.

Your baby sister is here on my lap, giving me gooey baby chin kisses. You would have loved her dearly. She is all innocence and bubbling contentment, babbling at birds and swaying bamboo. I hardly see the tangible green of our jungle yard. I have a knot in my throat and am lost in the mystery of ghostly reveries, grasping at imaginations and days of yesterday.

Today is your sixth Glory Day, little Damian. Six years of missing you. Six years of yearning to be with you again.

I couldn’t write on your birthday. That day is almost harder than this one. I’ll never forget Dr. Alemán’s declaration after unlooping the cord from around your neck and ankle: “it’s a little man!”

You went Home, just a baby. But truly, you were a little man. Your eyes were old eyes, filled with inexplicable wisdom. Maybe you knew you were never meant for this old world. You were so patient in your pain, suffered so valiantly. You brave, darling little man!! F.B Meyers says it’s from their mothers’ that men get their souls. That may be true, but you’ve given me far more soul than I could have ever hoped to give to you.

Oh, how I wish you were here! Our family always seems so incomplete, so obviously missing you. That space between the boys gapes at me every single day of my life.

Little Damian. My little man.

Your sufferings are long past. How selfish of me to wish you back! You’re in the arms of Christ, how can I presume to deserve to have you in mine? You’ve laid eyes on His wounded side, upon legions of angels, on the river of life…..oh, you would find little of beauty, nothing to admire in these earthly scenes! If I were to point out the blooming hibiscus, the vibrant bugambilia, the majestic palms, you would say, “oh mommy, that is nothing to what I have at Home.” And I would have to agree because Quinta Querit has nothing on the celestial Eden. Because this life is nothing compared to eternal life and because my love is nothing compared to God’s amazing love.

Wish you were here? No. Wish we were there.

But oh how I miss you….

Happy Glory Day, Damian. I love you.