Jason.

Brandon went to a Braves game the other night and got attacked by ninjas in the Marta parking lot on the way home.
Well.. they might have just been a small band of Chinese boys... but he came home with his nose bleeding. (I know baby.. you should have seen the other guy..)

Today I washed the Tshirt he was wearing that night. When he came home he asked if the blood came out of it. I pulled it out of the dryer.. I hadn't even noticed the blood. There was a huge spot on the front and when I saw it the room started spinning and it all came back.

I can hear 'Our Song', I can watch the video where we recorded the news the next night after it happened, with the blood on the front porch, hell I look at his face every day when I look at Sam.. Robert came home bloody tons of times after a bar brawl.. but tonight the blood on that Tshirt.. it just brought it home.
I didn't cry when we got him dressed for the funeral. I didn't cry when I cut a lock of his hair for her. I didn't break a sweat during labor 3 weeks later when I had Sam. I didn't cry for 17 years.

I used to talk to him..when I was 'crazy' and would hide in the closet all day b/c I thought I was going to die if I ventured out. I moved up from the closet to the rest of the house.. but I wouldn't leave it for 10 years. We would have long conversations about the state of my mental health, and how it might be affecting Sam, and what I could do about becoming 'normal.' I would make long lists of things I needed to do..'learn to mail the mail' is my all time favorite.

Jason was a hippie. He lad long brown hair and he wore a big cross carved out of ivory hung on a leather strap.. I cut that off him when we dressed him for the viewing. I knew he would understand and want Sam to have it. We would go to parties and he would sit on a log around a campfire and the people would come and sit at his feet and listen to him talk about God and Nostradamus and how we all just needed to find the peace in our lives. Sam said when she was little listening to the stories about him she thought he was Jesus.

Tonight is the night he was murdered. I won't cry tonight either, though. Tonight I will love my daughter. I will feel blessed to have her, and to have this wonderful life that God has given me, and tomorrow...tomorrow I will talk to Jason and we will talk about how our daughter is the most incredible person on this Earth. I will think about how she is as old as he ever got to be in this life, and I will think about what things she now needs to know..what things she is now old enough to learn. I will think about the things that Jason would want her to feel and to see at 17 years of age.

Tonight I miss Jason.