Harvest

This time of year I was a ghost around the house, Bobo. I could tell you noticed because of you preferring your Mom a little more. Overall, you were pretty even handed with your love, I must say. But this time of year, you definitely had a more mother based lean. With me being gone 12-14 hour days, and working weekends as well, you’d start to just become more dependent on your mother.

When I’d get home, I’d try to spend as much time with you as possible. Giving you your bath and putting you to bed, mostly. Your dinner would be made already (which was generally my job, as your Mom cooked for me and her) which would take me out of another loop that I normally would fulfill. So my interaction would become minimal. Since you don’t talk, there’s no real way for me to catch up besides just telling you my days story and asking about yours, and you just look at me and smile generally.

As the months wore on and I miss you more and more, this ache began in me. This feeling of something lost, something missing. I’d sit at work feeling empty for the time I was there. Knowing this was my job, but also wondering if it was worth it. Your mother and I talked about me trying to find something else that wasn’t a commute and wasn’t long hours during three months of the year. The money and the flexibility for the other 9 months of the year seemed to win out. Now I wonder. Would more time of you during those times helped now? Probably not.

When I lost you, it was just simply that you were gone. And I’d never be able to sit with you again. It doesn’t much matter that during that specific time of the year I didn’t get enough of my Bobo time. I did a pretty decent job of doing that the rest of the year, so I doubt it would change this ache in my heart for you. The ache exists because I can’t put my hands on your little face and feel your body against me as I carry you out of school. I can’t hear your noises as you played around the house or outside. So many things I’m missing with you gone. Never to be replaced. No matter what we do, no matter what choices we make from here, the Bobo vacancy will exist in all of us. And there’s no fixing that.

So here I sit, another harvest season, my first without you waiting for me at home. And that old familiar emptiness is here. But this time, running home won’t fix it, because there’s nowhere I can run where you’ll be. Except into the arms of death. And sometimes, that seems like it might just be the best choice.

I miss you.