Lost and Found

We found an old bottle of Lucas'. It still had something in it. Don't be grossed out, it wasn't milk. It was pedialyte from the night before his surgery. I remember putting it in the small fridge after he drank from it around midnight that night. And as you know, after the surgery, life was never the same again and I never went back to that bottle till four months after that night, after he passed away. The day we got home from Philadelphia, the oldest was with our parents on purpose so we could go home and do what we needed to do yelling, screaming, crying wise. One of the things I found was this bottle up in the little fridge. I never, could never, toss it. I couldn't even bring myself to pour out the contents. Neither could my husband obviously.

When we moved to this house, we had to do something with it, put it somewhere, toss it, pour the stuff out, do something...... I couldn't and remember thinking, I'll come back to it later, too much was going on for me to just take the bull by the horns and toss it. Apparantly, my husband took the bottle, contents and all, 1.5 years of just the same stuff in that same bottle and put it in a shoebox. He found it a few days ago. He brought the shoebox in the house with two other boxes. He left it in the dining room of all places. I couldn't stand to see these boxes so I began to go through them this morning. Lo and behold, in the first box was this lost bottle of sacred pedialyte. You would be surprised (and probably alarmed) at how well this stuff keeps. It was not rotten, not in the least. It did not smell, not at all. It was like I just poured it last night. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

I know it would have been ridiculous to keep it any longer. For what? He is gone. It's probably teeming with who knows what even though by all appearances visually seems fine. I slowly walked to the sink and even more slowly poured it out. I have sterilized the bottle and the nipple and the rest of it. It's now being used by the littlest. How's that for getting over a hurdle? It has taken quite some time for that little endeavor to take place.

I hope and I pray that one day things will feel easier for me. For all of us. Those around me even more than ever have moved on. I feel their frustration not to forget the littlest and wallow in the anger of my past. Please know I am not. Would not. EVER ever forget to be happy with the littlest. He is our now. Our present and our future, along with his oldest brother. I so totally get that. You have to know, I'm just a mom who has watched her middle child die in front of her, slowly, painfully at times, but it was the saddest most heart wrenching thing we could ever have gone through. I am happy now but there are still times, moments, days, when it's still very real. This bottle thing, well, it was a big deal for me to pour that out. May sound strange to you, but trust me, it was hard.

The bottle was lost and then became found. He isn't lost but in the real sense, the physical sense, he is lost to us. The thing is, he will be found again. In Heaven. IN THAT I TRUST.

---J