5 Months.

Today is 5 months.

153 days since I last saw your little face. 3672 hours since I last stroked your hair. 13,219,200 seconds since I patted your back and told you goodnight for the last time.

I remember in the early days, I said to Dean “How has he been gone a whole week?” and then “how has he been gone a whole month?” and before I know it, it will soon be a whole year.

To me it was just yesterday, I was chasing you around the park at Serpentine falls, watching you explore, comforting you after you hit your head on the big sign, yelling at daddy for letting you wander too far and cleaning off your sausage after you dropped it in the dirt (yeah, I still let you eat it)

It was just yesterday.

From the moment you left us, the world completely stopped. I couldn’t possibly allow time to go by without you because I thought the further it got, the further away from you we would feel. But I don’t feel far from you anymore.

I was so afraid that I would forget you, but in 20 years’ time, if someone asked me to describe you, I know I could do it with the utmost detail. From your way too perfectly shaped head (including the little cliff at the back just like mine) to your ears, that looked pretty standard from the front but from behind looked like the size of an elephants, right down to your dimply little bottom and the little birthmark on your outer thigh.

I still expect to hear your trotting up behind me as I open the dishwasher, waiting for you to shove passed me so you can climb on top of it. I still pick up ‘bite-sized’ objects off the floor out of habit, in case you put them in your mouth and choke, and when we are driving in daddy’s car I still wait for the sound of you scratching the dodgy window tinting over and over again.

I can see your little face light up as soon as Ava walks in the room, and I can hear you calling her name perfectly, even though you couldn’t say anything else. I can see the concentration on your face as you pulled your arm back ready to throw your tennis ball across the room like a maniac and I can hear your little footsteps coming up the hall to find me and daddy, we would lay on the bed and say “Uh oh! Here he comes!”

So many plans for you will go unfulfilled, but we will plan them and finish them for you.

So many birthdays will pass without the birthday boy, but we will celebrate them and blow out your candles as we think of you.

The world has missed out on such a wonderful thing, but we will put more wonderful things into the world on your behalf.

I love you little man.