Writing is one of the ways that I process my feelings, and I’ve been writing about my son Andy since 2009. So it feels natural to find myself here at my laptop today on what would have been his 16th birthday.
For the past 16 years, I’ve written letters to Andy on his birthdays and angel days, and I’ve poured my heart into essays about how our family has navigated grief, found hope, and moved forward together. But one thing I will never write is that we’ve moved on without him.
If you come to our house, you’ll see his pictures on the walls in almost every room. His red, personalized toybox still sits in the playroom. His quilt is on his little brother’s bed, and two stuffed bunnies dressed in his onesies are perched in his little sister’s room. His name and image are on tee shirts in our closets – the ones we wear each year to the Cure SMA events we attend in his memory. His tiny socks are still in my nightstand.
Andy is very much a part of our home and family. He’s present tense, not past.
But that doesn’t mean that we’re hanging on to what’s not here. That we’re stuck in a cycle of grief. Instead, we’ve worked hard to keep Andy’s memory alive, even when it’s not always easy. The pain of losing him is tempered by the immense joy of having had him at all.
In the classic movie Steel Magnolias, the character Truvey Jones says, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” I experienced that feeling firsthand on January 8, 2009 – and over and over again in the 16 years since.
You already know the story of the day he was born. I had a scheduled c-section at 41 weeks pregnant. He was 9 pounds, 14 ounces. The nurses in the operating room called him “Mr. Big”. I threw up on the operating table, then thought I was going to die from a freak reaction to intrathecal pain medication. The day Andy was born was my first real lesson in what the word “bittersweet” meant.
It’s no surprise that today feels equally as bittersweet—a “Bittersweet 16,” if you will. I’ve watched my friends’ children, the same age as Andy, grow up through social media posts. Seeing them now, I can’t help but wonder who Andy might have been as a teenager. I try not to dwell on the “what ifs” and “could have beens,” but they’re always there. I grieve for the birthdays he never got to celebrate and the life he never had the chance to live.
But then his siblings Lucy and Will come home from school, and I’m quickly reminded of everything we have because of Andy. He gave us this family, this home, this life—and that’s a sweetness all its own. Today, we’ll look for the dragonflies that symbolize him, and we’ll celebrate him the best we can. I’ll rehash that birth story again for the kids, wiping away the tears as I laugh at the memories. We’ll visit his garden and eat homemade cake. It’s not “normal” and it’s not what we planned, but it’s real. It’s not our past, it’s our everyday.
And, we’ll continue moving forward together – through the bitter and the sweet of it. All five of us.
–Audra Butler, Andy’s Mom
