Seeing You

There are pictures of you that make me feel as though I could reach out and touch you.  I find myself reaching for your hair, your face, your hands.  You look so real, so alive, so here...and yet  your are not.  Oh how my heart hurts.

I wonder where you are...how far away you are...I know deep inside of me that you are with the Father, but where is that?  You feel so very far away from us.  Not a moment passes that you are not in my thoughts.  I try and imagine that you are close.  Are you?  What if there is nothing more than a thin veil separating this life we live from the eternity that you are now in?  Are you just on the other side and yet I just can't see you?  Could you be that close to us?  I hope that you are.

18 months have passed since we have touched you. It still doesn't seem real.  There are days we go to your rooms and still expect to see you there.  I walk in the front door and hear the words I used to speak to you escape my lips.  I stand outside the doors to your playroom and imagine you there... playing, giggling, sleeping.  I can't go in...it hurts too much...but I can peek through the glass and remember you there.  Sometimes I catch myself asking daddy to not wake you as he gets ready for work.  Reminding him to move quietly around the house.

Everything changed in our world the moment you left.  Daddy changed.  I changed.  Blake and Allie changed.  Our family is so different now that we are separated from you.  We all feel your absence.  We keep breathing, living, moving...but so much of who we were ended when your life ended.

I so desperately wish that we could just peek into your eternity.  If only we could see past whatever it is that separates us from you.  I close my eyes at night and hope to see you in my dreams.  Your not there.  Some people have shared that they have seen you as they dream, but we have yet to see you.  I have no idea what it feels like to see you running and smiling and playing, but the retelling of those who have seen you makes my heart ache to be the one who is seeing you.  Their words bring me hope that someday I might dream of you too.

We count the days since we have seen you and know that each one brings us closer to you.  How grateful I am to know that you don't ache for us as we ache for you.  There is no time where you are.  You are with the Father and He is outside of time.  One day you will look up and we will be there and it will as though we were never apart.



Time doesn't heal the hurt.  The tears don't stop just because the months are piling up.

You will forever be one of us.  We will forever miss seeing you.

I love you Ashley Kate.  Have always loved you.  Still love you.  Will forever love you.