Empty

Dear Stevie,
"Our house just feels so...empty," Dad said one night. It was a few days after we got home from the hospital, and the two of us were sprawled out on the living room floor together, just starring at the ceiling in silence. "It really does," I quietly replied.

It seems odd to talk about our house feeling "empty" when it has the same number occupants living in it now as there were when we first moved in, just two weeks before you died. It's not like there used to be children running through the halls and now there are not. I didn't even spend most of my pregnancy in this house, so there are hardly any memories of that here. But our house feels so empty since you've been gone.

Our house was never filled with children, or memories of the past, but in the short time we lived there, we had filled it up with so many future memories, so many plans and hopes and dreams. Plans and hopes and dreams for you. For our life as a family of three.

We started filling it with future memories the day we looked at the house for the first time. I left a trail of plans behind me as I walked into the room which would be your nursery and said to Dad, "this is just perfect for the baby." I stuffed the closet, which I declared would be "perfect for all the baby's toys," full of hopes. I left a huge pile of dreams out on the deck, which I noted, "is perfect for hanging a baby swing from."

As we unpacked our things and settled into the new place a month later, we also unpacked box upon box full of future memories and put them away throughout the house. Dreams of reading to you were placed up on the bookshelf. Plans of watching all the classic Disney movies with you were put next to the TV. Hopes of making our own homemade baby food for you were shoved in the kitchen cabinet, next to the food processor. Thoughts of bath time with our new baby were dispersed between shampoo bottles, body wash, and cans of shaving cream in the tub. We put our plans and hopes and dreams in every nook and cranny of every room of our new house. In no time at all, it was filled to the brim with our future memories. It was full.

And now, it's empty.

The moment you died, all those plans, hopes, dreams, and future memories died too. They all vanished in an instant, snatched away from their perfect spots in our home. We used to be surrounded by a lifetime of things to come, and now we are surrounded by...emptiness.

I suppose we will start to fill it up again, slowly, with plans and hopes and dreams of a different kind. I've already carefully placed the dream of another positive pregnancy test on the counter by the bathroom sink. I've cautiously left bits of hope of running through the grass after another child in the backyard. I've secretly put plans of naps with a new baby sleeping peacefully on my chest on the living room couch. Hopefully, someday, these future memories will become realities. Hopefully, someday, our house will be filled not only with plans and hopes and dreams, but with the sound of children laughing and a lifetime of real memories.

Even so, our house, and any house we ever live in in the future, will never feel quite full. I think there will always be a little piece of emptiness wherever we are, because we will always be missing you, Baby.

I love you so much and miss you more everyday.

Always and forever,
Mom