Baby Girl,
I couldn't stop thinking about you yesterday. Your beautiful smile, your amazing voice, your infectious laugh. It all hung around me like a dense fog. Thick and impossible to miss, but not quite tangible.
It's bound happen more now, I guess. The holidays are a bittersweet time. I am as wrapped up in your absence as I am in the joy of the season.
I talked at great length to the mother of one of your high school friends yesterday. You used with her child. I was struck, as I always am when I see or talk about one of your old friends, by the fact that you are gone and they are here. I try so hard not to be jealous.
What a random roll of the dice this has all been. How crazy that some addicts use for decades, and you're gone forever. It is a hard thing to reconcile, and almost impossible not to feel cheated.
I love you each and every moment of every day. I do my best to dwell on the things that mattered about you, about who you were - not on the tragic decisions you made. Most days I am successful.
I hate that you are gone, but I am so grateful that I had you at all.
Always,
Mommy
