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I thought I knew what I was going to write about. Three years ago today, TJ and I were being airlifted from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia, from one Children’s Hospital to another. I thought I was going to tell you about all the hope I felt that day to be able to get back to our home hospital and meet with his beloved doctor. I thought I was going to go on to tell you that it was all just a lovely hoax and that it was only the beginning of the end. But then…

…but then I had conversations with two people tonight. Both are friends from my childhood. Both have been by my side whenever I needed them. Our conversations did not start out about TJ. They started out with the one asking about another person’s tragedy that she is in the midst of; and the other began as a conversation about change and opportunity. Both very different beginnings that each took a turn in the road as conversations do. Interestingly, both people told me in their own way that TJ is waiting for me. They said that while he is here with me, he is also simply waiting for me to join him.

As I sit here writing I am surrounded by his things- his stuffed animals, his wall of souvenirs and posters, his paintings, his Lego creations, his fedoras. These are all representations of his earthly existence.

They are bittersweet memories. Actually, no. These things are not the memories. They are what evoke the memories. And they are good memories for the most part. But some of them remind me in their sad and longing voice that these stories, these treasured times, wouldn’t have existed if TJ hadn’t been sick in the first place. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. Does it make these memories more painful? Perhaps.

It does make me realize that we can’t sit around waiting to make memories until they are the ones we think of posthumously.

We must live fully in the now. One of my favorite modern day poets, Dean Jackson, recently posted this quote by Osho: “Now is the only reality. Everything else is either memory or imagination.” How very true this is. But so many times we are stuck in the past- for all its good and its bad- or we are stuck pondering, worrying, or planning for the future, never really knowing if the future is even ours to have. Nothing against being prepared for the future, but allowing either of these- the past or the future- to hog tie us and disable us from being in the now is no way to live. Because what would truly be sad is if we never got around to making happy memories with those we love the most.

So I contemplate this and it brings me to a thought (it brings me to many thoughts, but this is the one I’ll tell you about tonight): my “now” is here on this place we call Earth but TJ’s “now” is in the mist, the ether, the heavens, the whatever- you-want-to-call-it. The “things” I have to represent his spiritual existence as he now lives are not things at all. They are encounters and happenings and voices and smells and messages. I keep these in a book. Every time I am able to see or hear or smell or in any way get a message from TJ, I write it in my journal (actually, I need to write one in there from the other day.) There is a poster of sorts I hung on the back of his door. It was on display at his funeral (God, I hate that word- “funeral”) It says, in essence, that we are to keep talking about him the way we always did. We are not to be afraid to speak his name and laugh and enjoy all the things we did about him when he was here with us. And it ends by reminding us- me- that he is just on the other side of the veil, waiting. This is what both of my friends were telling me. He is not gone. He is not lost. He has moved. If my best friend moved to California I would not consider her moving as a loss. I would miss her- even deeply at times- but I would never say I had lost her. I would not grieve her move. If I knew, as it was expressed to me, that in a few years I would see TJ and that every so often I would see him again, would I feel the same loss? I had to think about this for a minute. Hmmm, no, I guess I wouldn’t. I would miss him, even terribly miss him. I thought in that instant that maybe I would miss him like a mom misses her son who’s been sent overseas in the military. No, I think that mom would also be worried for her son’s safety and I know TJ is safe. It would just be a good old fashioned, can’t wait to see him, when is he coming home kind of missing him. And so I was reminded (because I already knew this is my head and I’m hoping my heart catches up soon!) that that is all that is happening here. Except TJ is waiting for ME to come home- home to where he is, home to where we will all be. Home.