Three.

Last year we celebrated Henry's birthday with a secret.  Just barely into my second trimester and finally getting over the worst of my morning sickness, we had yet to announce my pregnancy to anyone but our parents.  We decided to keep our happy news quiet for several reasons, but one of the biggest was that we felt it would be best to wait until after Henry's anniversaries.  Although we were certain that no one else was more excited about adding to our family than Henry, we wanted to reserve his day for one more year.

We knew what the next year would bring.  We knew that although Henry's birthday was and always would be a special day, that February 9th, 2012 was different, because hopefully, it was our last time commemorating his birth with empty arms.  It was important for me to have one last birthday to grieve Henry without distraction.  I wanted to allow myself to dwell a little longer on things that I normally could not think about everyday.  Images, memories, and sounds that were far too sad to revisit very often.  And, admittedly, I needed one more time to really feel the poignancy of his loss.  To be swallowed up in the emotions of truly missing him - my firstborn, my baby, "the one that got away."

I needed to feel the rawness again.

To lose myself in the intensity of loss just one more time before a little bit more of it went away.

Because I knew that once another little person entered into my life, that things would change and although they would absolutely be for the better, that I would likely not feel the same way again.

At the time, my grief was my strongest and most obvious connection to Henry.  Last year marked two years since his death and although my grief had certainly softened since his passing, it was still my conduit to him.  My tears, my heartaches, and my little rituals kept him fresh in my mind.  And they kept him as a constant in my life.

Several months after Henry passed away I realized that I could no longer hide in my house and that at some point or another I would have to re-enter the real world.  Up until that point Rob, my family, and my friends, cradled me from the shock of loss.  They sheltered me, fed me, and loved me and with their support I was able to gradually come out of my shock and start to grieve.  But I knew that that would change once I began to work again and to fully interact with the outside world.  It would have to.  The world had to keep spinning and I had to find a way to move with it.  But my little universe had been completely rocked and it had been rocked drastically.  In my lowest moments, I felt powerless and helpless, and in the dark, I felt doomed to be the victim of my circumstances.  To be forever missing something and always missing someone.

And then sometime between landing a new job and the simple passage of time it became clear to me that in order for me to get through Henry's loss that I needed to hold nothing back.  That one of the only ways that I would truly be able to survive such a devastating loss would be to immerse myself in the experience and let it follow its course.  To dive in, and not expect to tread water until I was ready.  I knew that even though at the time, our house was empty and our hearts were ravaged, that someday someone else would come along.  And when he or she came, I wanted no regrets in missing Henry so that I could turn myself over to them without regret.

So tomorrow we will celebrate the birth and life of Henry Robert Koelliker.  We will launch balloons to the heavens, we will undoubtedly shed some tears, and we will revisit some special and sacred places.

And I will clutch, hug, and kiss my sweetest and most meaningful connections to my oldest son.

And as I look into Rob's handsome face or Eddie's beautiful blue eyes I will be gently reminded of the boy who is waiting for me.  Who is surely so much like his father and his brother but is very much his own person.  And he is the one that I will never stop missing.