32 Candles

Happy Birthday Jesper.  You would have been 32 today....I know you are in a better place, and that I should be celebrating your life, and not keep mourning your death.  But... I don't know how to do that right now.

Jesper, it took me a long time to figure out that you really died.  I knew it, I told people, and sometimes I even cried.  But it wasn't until I went home and actually saw your grave, and felt the empty space that your beautiful smile and spirit usually occupied, that I finallly understood the finality of it all....  You weren't there.  Jesper, to me you didn't die until December 20th 2012, the day it became real.

I want you to know, that you were loved, I loved you, Tom loved you, everybody loved you.  You brought so much to the world, if there ever was a fighter out there, it was you.  Your most admirable quality was your ability to just live in the now, you did not carry the pain of the past with you, nor did you worry about the pain of tomorrow.  We have so many wonderful memories from your life... You were always deadly honest, when the priest called Tom Thomas in the church when we got married, you yelled "Not Thomas, TOM".  Once as kids all three of us were running around the backyard in our swimsuits, we have a picture, that still haunts me.....I remember standing outside your bedroom door listening to you speaking to yourself at the end of the day while you were recovering from aphasia.  We knew that you had not lost your ability to speak, you just needed to find your voice again, and boy did you find it.... You really got it back at Easter one year.  I am not quite sure what was up, but you let all of us have it, you were especially hard on Farfar.  My guess is that the two of you have probably worked all that out by now....

You were a tough cookie, and every day I grieve, I grieve because I miss you, I grieve because I never got to say good bye to you, I grieve out of selfishness.....

I don't own a red shirt.... but I am wearing my red pants today to remember you, and Tom put on the closest thing he has to a red shirt when he went to work.

We all cry, we all miss you, and sometimes the knowledge that you are watching over us, and that we will see you again some day, only offers very little consolation.

I love you Jesper, I miss you.....

P

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