It was just an estimate made early in pregnancy of when he (before he was known to be a boy!) was to be born, but it's all I have to be able to say that around this day he would have turned five.  FIVE!  In a parallel life, we would be preparing for starting kindergarten in the coming fall.  I really enjoy kids around this age, when they are adorably expressive and still like to cuddle.

I went to work yesterday for the first time since March 28 became an anniversary.  My mom is proud of me and thinks it's a sign of healing.  I'm not so sure.  What if I'm healed AND elect to not treat days that were (are?) about Toren as if they were just an ordinary day? 

Every day is a day of silently missing Toren. 

Having tried it, I don't think I will take the day off next year.  With work, there wasn't time to visit the cemetery yesterday (or today, or tomorrow).  There wasn't space to reflect. 

My ex-husband spells Toren's name differently than I do.  Torin.

I didn't correct him because it doesn't matter, does it?  There are the small monuments I have with his name - a brick in the cemetery where his ashes are buried, an identical brick in a different cemetery where my local SHARE group has a memorial garden, and a third identical brick in my garden (yes, I had three made!) - but there aren't legal documents or anything where Toren's name was written.  His name is all over in this journal and all through my personal writings.  It's been written in the sand on multiple beaches by multiple, loving people.  It's been printed on t-shirts for the March for Babies.  It's stamped into a silver pendant which I still wear most days.  TOREN.

.....

Toren was born and my husband was not interested in naming him - he gave the restriction that I couldn't give him the family name that he was always going to have (he was going to the fifth, plus have a nickname like his father and grandfather had had) so I named him the nickname that was my favorite at that time.  His father took away his name to be used later for a living baby.  So it's not like we had a discussion and agreed upon a name and spelling.

.....

His father began his grief late.  After Toren's name had been written here, spoken at support meetings that I attended alone, and carved out in permanent and transient mediums - after leaving me behind to remember Toren alone, my ex now visits the cemetery.  I guess he didn't see the brick.

Toren is mine and Torin is his and it doesn't really matter because the boy is not here.

.....

A long time ago I decided, or discovered, that my job as Toren's mother is to love him endlessly, because that is what his soul needs.

It's good that his father is also remembering and loving him, in his own way.