Posted by Daddy on at 1:05 am

Dear Weeble,

I sit here in my chair alone on your third birthday. The household is asleep.

This day should have been so completely joyful, and now I don’t know how I am going to get through it without you. The words of King Solomon are echoing through my mind, and I wonder just what he really felt when he wrote them:

A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

I do not think I am all that wise, but my heart is in the house of mourning. I don’t think I’m a fool for yearning for the mirth that you brought into my house. I know what Solomon meant; Life isn’t a party, and death is sure, so be ready for it. I have been prepared for my own death for years, but I was blind sided by yours.

This same Solomon tells us that a merry heart doeth good, like a medicine. In a few hours a big bouncy house will arrive in our back yard. It will be placed right where you last saw the one we got for Tater’s birthday. You would have had such a good time on it. I hope that watching the other children play in your honor and in your memory will bring me some of that merriment; I need that medicating goodness.

If you can see this pallid, dying world from your vantage point, I hope you enjoy watching your friends and siblings celebrating your birthday. Not like the crippled boy who, staring out the window, dreams of leaving his sick bed, but more like the father who fondly remembers his own youth, and now, in a different existence, enjoys experiencing the joy of his beloved children even more than he takes pleasure in his own.

I do believe that my heart is being made better by the sadness I feel in your absence, but the price is so unthinkably high. I have never missed anything or anyone as much as I miss you, and I feel like my heart will explode from the sorrow. I hate this particular portion of my lot in life. I would pay with my eyes, ears, tongue and limbs for the remainder of my life to feel you laying beside me every once in a while.

I know that you have more than I could ever give you now that you are home. Here in the Far Country we have such meager provisions compared to what’s in the coffers of Heaven. Still, although my love for you pales in comparison to God’s, if it were tangible its mass would pull the Earth out of orbit. It’s all I can give you for your birthday this year, and perhaps for many years to come. But my love is all I really ever had to give anyway. The rest belongs to God, who gives and takes as He sees fit. Oh how I despise that fact right now.

Happy birthday, my little boy.