Dear Sammy

Dear Sammy,

Have I mentioned lately how much I miss you?

Yep.

I meet people all the time who tell me how inspirational you have been to them. I nod, I smile. I don't cry, usually.

But what do I really want to say? I want to ask them to imagine how much more inspirational you could have been if you were given the chance to grow up. You barely go to do anything, after all. So much time spent in the hospital being your delightful self, you never really got to go out in the world and really do something, really figure out who you were going to be. Oh, Sam, I think the world missed out on something big. Everyone thinks their kids are something special. I know that. But you, Sam...I think you would have done spectacular things. I think about it all the time, I wonder what you would say to other kids when we would visit the hospital. I wonder what you would say when you stood on stages and attended walks and blood drives and shave events. (I wonder what you would be doing in school, at home, everywhere...) I miss you every day. And I'm desperately sad about what the whole world really missed out on.

Everyone thinks about you all the time, but Solly talks about you the most. The other day he asked me, out of the blue, "is Sammy taller than all of us?" I felt a little bit breathless to think about how much taller you would be. But then he followed up: "I think Sammy is standing on a big turtle." Yael and I laughed. He makes us laugh every day, and it helps us to feel better. We try to laugh every day...

David cleaned out his room and found two notebooks filled with your drawings. It gave me such pleasure to look at your simple pencil sketches and run my fingers over the sheets of paper...your hands touched these pages. "Classic Sammy," we called them, as we paged through pictures of dinosaurs and monsters and aliens. I can only imagine what kind of artist you would have become. I bought Solly his first drawing notebook this month...you would have been a great drawing coach to him.

Spring is here. Mother's Day is around the corner, and you know that we never made a really big deal about it. You know I think that you should be awesome to your mama every day. But I love the handmade presents and the heartfelt cards (anytime). There are only three people left who call me "mom" and that breaks my heart each and every day.

We're getting ready to close out another school year. You'd be getting ready for a summer at camp, I'd be comparing pictures of you from the beginning of the school year to now. Instead, we're doing these things without you.

Miss you and wish you were here.
Love,
Mom

P.S. Here are a few pictures of your adorable face....missing you every day. Oh, by the way, would you still let us call you Sammy? Would you be insisting on Sam...or Samuel?