Stickman

“An Angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth, and whispered as she closed the book, ‘too beautiful for earth.'”

Author Unknown

“Whatcha got going on in there?” my three-year-old asked me, running into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“In there!” He pointed behind him,then grabbed my hand impatiently to pull me into the bathroom. “This day here on the wall! What’s the red for?”

I stared at the calendar beneath Julian’s finger. The square for January 17 was circled in bright red.

It’s your brother’s due date… “Um…”

“What’s it for?” he asked again. “Is there going to be a party?”

No. Not anymore.

“It’s just a day,” I quickly stammered, “a day Mommy wants to remember.”

He raised an eyebrow, wanting to know more, but I was done. “Do you want to play a game?” I quickly interjected.

“Yes! I do!” he grinned, easily distracted from our conversation as he spun on his heels to go find a game. But I lingered, staying behind by the wall that held the calendar for January 2012. It was only three days away, the due date for my son who had died in August 2011.

The square for January 17…I’d had special plans for that particular square. It was supposed to have had a smiley face drawn onto it, one that I’d intended Julian to draw in his messy little boy scrawl. The smiley face was supposed to have been a special memory for our entire family to look back on for years to come, the calendar page cut out and glued into a baby book, next to a picture of a healthy newborn. But the square I was staring at was empty, all except for the glaring red circle around the number “17.”

And I had to wonder, because all I could do, was wonder…

…would Julian have drawn his usual stickman figure onto that square? The same smiling stickman figure that he always draws for every occasion?

Julian…at age 3 in the year 2012

♥

Photo credit: <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/author/35bd0e”>fluffydragon</a&gt; on <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/re/1708bd”>VisualHunt</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”&gt; CC BY</a>. Photo credit: <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/author/804119″>The Jordan Collective</a> on <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/re/b9813a”>VisualHunt</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”&gt; CC BY-NC-ND</a>. Photo credit: <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/author/b92932″>MTSOfan</a&gt; on <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/re/b9813a”>Visualhunt</a&gt; / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”&gt; CC BY-NC-SA</a>