For Wesley: The Story of the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

This post talks about pet illness, death, and grief. Please care for your heart and skip this one if you’re not in a place to read about that today.

Hi friends.

I have put this off for as long as I could. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I knew when I typed it, every word would change the shape of my grief. Every sentence would confirm that Wesley is gone, and I have not known how to live in a world where that is true. Losing him has been the deepest pain I have felt since I lost my Dad.

Wesley was our cat, our first baby, our whole little universe, and he was only six years old. Writing this is the only thing left I can still do for him. I am still in the aftershock, trying to tell his story without my heart collapsing in on itself.

I needed a little time to breathe before putting any of this into words. I'm only writing this now because while the silence is painful and the truth hurts too, pretending he was never here would hurt even more.

I could not come back to my life, my work, or the version of myself you know until I honored the little soul who held my universe together.

My boy.

My home.

My companion in every lifetime.

The heartbeat that anchored our little family of three.

The angel who changed me in ways I am still learning every day.

Wesley.

The House Feels Wrong Without Him

This is where I live now. In a home that used to have this faint background soundtrack of him. A rustle. A thump. A rattle.

Now our house feels unfamiliar, even though nothing has moved. It's his absence, the space he filled. Where air used to vibrate with his life force. A silence that is not quiet. It screams.

Even though he sometimes spent hours tucked away in one of his mysterious little hideouts, the house still had his warmth in it. His presence wasn’t always visible, but it was always felt, and the silence he left behind feels louder than any sound he ever made.

The corners of the house feel wrong.

The couch feels wrong.

Life feels wrong.

The windowsill is empty.

The light falls differently.

Nights stretch. Mornings sting.

The rooms feel tilted, like our little world alone is the only one spun off-center. Something inside me keeps reaching for a light in the sky I cannot touch. It feels like a soul-thread snapped, and I am still trying to grab both ends.

But to understand that, I have to take you back.

Before Wesley: The Old Wounds

There are parts of life that leave you convinced the universe forgot you on purpose. Some wounds convince you that you have to handle everything alone, that love has conditions, that you have to be small and easy and quiet to deserve comfort.

For me, it looked like being the girl who managed everyone else’s crisis and then cried alone in the bathroom so no one would have to deal with hers. I can still picture myself sitting on the cold tile of that old bathroom, trying to cry quietly so no one would hear. I didn’t realize back then how used I was to swallowing my pain whole.

Those wounds live in the background of your life until something interrupts them, something that fits into the cracks like it was designed for that exact shape. I did not know it then, but Wesley was that something. The one thing that softened a hardness I thought would stay with me forever.

With him, I finally felt like I belonged to something. It wasn’t emotional effort. He was spiritual company. A presence in my life that met me where I hurt and didn’t ask me to hide it.

That realization didn’t come slowly. It came instantly.

He made me see myself differently. He proved wrong the fear I had carried since childhood, the one that whispered I would be too selfish to be a mom. He loved me in a way that made that belief crumble. He made motherhood feel natural to me, instinctual, obvious. I felt so lucky.

He arrived at a time when everything else in my life was slipping through my fingers. We brought Wesley home while my Dad was dying. I was in denial, still trying to keep his morale up because I thought hope alone could hold my world in place.

Baby Wesley and my Dad

Wesley’s name was my Dad’s middle name, the name I would have had if I were born a boy. I realize now I was trying to anchor my life to something steady while the universe was coming apart.

Wesley arrived in the middle of that unraveling. He did not fix the grief, but he held the parts of me that were collapsing. In a lot of ways, he was the living bridge between the girl I was losing and the woman I was becoming.

I thought naming him after my Dad would protect me, or him, or both of us, but time has shown me that I was just trying to stitch something steady into a moment that was already breaking me.

I was just 21 and trying to stay strong for someone I was already losing.

I forgive that girl. I understand her. If I could go back, I would hold her face in my hands and tell her she does not need to braid new love into old grief just to survive.

How Wesley Came Into Our Life

I had been waiting for him for years. I desperately wanted another pet, having always grown up with at least one in my house at any given time.

Our apartment complex didn’t allow animals, so all I could do was wait and hope the rules would change or we would move. The exact same week our apartment finally allowed pets, the universe stepped in.

I was out with some old coworkers, just a normal catch-up lunch. At some point, I casually mentioned we were having trouble finding a kitten.

One of them laughed and said, “Well… that’s funny, because guess what?” Her cat had just had a litter, and there was only one kitten.

It felt less like a coincidence and more like something God was opening up to us, the kind of timing only life can script. Her family wasn’t going to be keeping him, and somehow, without planning anything, the path was suddenly clear. Like he was meant for us before we even knew his name.

A few days later, we brought him home. He was tiny, soft, gray, and perfect. On the way home, we stopped at the store so he’d have food, litter, and toys waiting for him. Jon, now my fiancé, ran inside while I stayed in the car with Wesley, just staring at him with tears in my eyes. I already loved him completely.

When we got home and opened his carrier, he didn’t do the normal kitten hesitation. He didn’t sniff cautiously. He didn’t hide. He didn’t wait to be reassured. He walked straight into the apartment and explored every corner with this bold, curious energy that was just… him.

Baby Wesley playing

Right away, he went over to the little kitten toys Jon had picked out at the store, especially these small rattling toy balls he loved to fling with his nails, and started checking everything out, like our home had always belonged to him.

He walked toward us like we were a memory. There was no warm-up period. No adjustment time. No “getting used to us.” He belonged from the second he arrived.

The moment we looked into his eyes, we both felt a shock. A warmth. A click that felt older than this lifetime. A spiritual recognition, the kind that makes your heart say, “I know you… There you are...”

It felt like a promise being fulfilled. I didn’t grow him in my body, but I grew him in my heart long before he existed. I suddenly felt protective, chosen, connected, and changed, all at once. Looking back, that was the moment something inside me began to loosen. The part that believed I was hard to love was finally exhaling.

There’s one moment from our first day with him that still hits me in the chest. Jon had fallen asleep sitting upright on our old yellow hand-me-down couch, and tiny Wesley had climbed up his leg and perfectly curled on his lap, like that spot had been waiting for him.

I remember stopping in my tracks because it didn’t make sense how natural it looked. It was day one. Jon hadn’t even wanted a pet, and here they were, already settling into each other like they’d been family for years.

I took a picture, half because it was cute and half because something in me knew I was watching my life rearrange itself. Like the three of us had just… clicked into place without any of us realizing it was happening.

Who He Was

Over six beautiful years, far too short, Wesley grew into this long, elegant being with eyes of green, hints of blue, and wires of gold that caught the light in a way that made him look wise and mischievous at the same time.

His paws were small but heavy when he walked across the floor, like he had no idea he was only a cat and not a much larger animal. He made this soft thump-thump on the hardwood that always gave him away, even when he thought he was being stealthy.

Wesley was not a background cat. He was the main character. He had more personality than most people I’ve met, and emotional intelligence that felt almost human.

He had depth. Humor. Opinions. Methods. A routine that made our little house feel like home, which he ran with absolute authority. He had this proud, stubborn, hilarious, adorable energy that filled the whole house.

He always knew when we were almost home. It didn’t matter if we were gone for ten minutes or ten hours. Somehow, he felt us coming and would wake from a deep slumber to run to the window or back door. I saw it myself many times. We’d be waiting for Jon to come home, I'd open Find My Friends, and every time, somehow without me saying anything, Wesley would already be at the back door within minutes of him arriving. It was like he monitored the universe for our return.

On an ordinary day, he’d do his morning patrol, yell at us for breakfast, then follow me to the couch while I worked. He loved sitting behind me, his front paws on the windowsill behind me while he watched the birds outside, tail thumping my face. Constantly. I’d grumble and remove his hair from my lip gloss, while secretly loving that he insisted on being that close to me. Now I miss that more than I ever imagined.

He had a largely dairy-related crime record. He stole ice cream, Greek yogurt, and cheese sticks without remorse. He'd bite into a closed pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a carton of milk and sprint away like a felon.

It wasn’t just unattended food either. He tried to take it from our hands, sometimes even our mouths. He even would try to steal Jon’s sushi sometimes, and once dragged a 16-pound bag of cat food across the floor with his teeth.

Every December, he’d run full speed and launch himself up into the Christmas tree and knock it down. Full commitment. Zero hesitation. We learned to never put fragile ornaments on it ever again.

When he was little, he used to climb the balcony screen door at our old apartment like Spider-Man, which is honestly one of my favorite memories.

The boy also loved helping us with the laundry. Jon would dump out the laundry basket on the bed, and Wesley would catch every sock mid-air like it was a sport. He’d guard the little pile like a dragon protecting treasure.

Every few months, he picked a new “spot.” Under the kitchen table. On the couch. Jon’s office chair. Inside a paper bag. In the soundproofing box I use for vocal recordings.

And his personal favorite when he was feeling mischievous was the top of the cabinets and the support beam in our kitchen, which nearly gave me a heart attack every time we had to figure out how to get him down.

He even had a little squirrel friend who visited him at different windows, and Wesley always knew which window he’d appear at next. One day, the squirrel went to the kitchen door, and Wesley ran over too, trying to open it so they could hang out. It was bizarre and adorable. (We're 90% sure he didn't want to eat him... 😅)

He guarded our home and patrolled the house at night like a tiny security guard, and he took his career very seriously. He'd open the kitchen closets with his nails, inspect them thoroughly, and slam them shut. Sometimes at 3am.

Only after completing his rounds would he come curl at our feet or in the crook of our arms. If we ever took a nap, Wesley positioned himself strategically to monitor every entry point. He guarded us like it was his mission.

He didn’t have one meow. He had dozens. Chirps, trills, squeaks, dramatic wails, questioning meows, impatient screams, warbly songs, and invented sounds that made up his own dialect. He had a full language. We meowed back at him and had “conversations.”

We were just starting to understand certain meows meant certain things. We always wanted to get him those buttons from TikTok, but we were worried he’d use those instead of his “words” and decided against it. We loved when he “spoke” to us.

He followed us everywhere. He didn’t respect personal space even one bit, but we loved that about him. He woke us up by sitting on the headboard and tapping our foreheads like a hungry alarm clock, sometimes even placing his little paw on our mouths, which apparently is something they do to “mark” who they love with their scent.

One of my favorite ways he showed us love was his slow blinks and his headbutts. The cat versions of “I love you.” We learned what it meant from a documentary and started doing it back to him.

After a while, it became our little ritual. A quiet way of saying “I love you” without making a sound. We still do it to each other sometimes. It stuck. That’s the power he had.

That was our life. Just the three of us, in a tiny house that felt like the center of the universe because he was in it.

How He Loved Us

For all his chaos, he had this unbelievable tenderness in him. Whenever I cried about my Dad, he never paused to analyze the situation or decide if it was the right moment. He just came.

He'd climb into my lap, press his forehead to mine, knead whatever part of me he thought hurt, sniff my tears, and sometimes even lick them away like he was trying to clean sadness off my skin.

It was empathy you could feel physically. No one in my life has ever understood my emotions without words the way he did.

He showed love in a thousand tiny ways. When we were petting him while he groomed himself, he would suddenly switch from cleaning his own fur to licking our hands or arms like we were part of him.

He smelled like warm laundry and sunshine when I buried my face in his fur, and his weight on my chest felt like the only thing keeping my ribs from shattering sometimes.

Some days, he'd walk straight up to our bookcase and pull down a random book. It always happened to be something meaningful in that moment, almost like he was choosing the words we were too overwhelmed to look for.

He cuddled near my feet while I worked, and if he was anxious, whether it was because of thunder, construction, or because one of us was sick, he climbed over my laptop and onto my chest like he was trying to protect me from whatever was happening in our little world.

At some point, I finally figured out that if I sang to him, especially a slow version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” he would calm down instantly. I still do not understand why that song worked, but it did, every single time.

He quietly challenged every story I had ever believed about myself. The part of me that felt hard to love, he curled up on. The part that thought love came with conditions, he disproved every morning he chose my lap.

He did not fix my past, but he changed the way it lived inside me. He showed me a softness I had not felt in years, a gentleness I did not know how to access on my own. Life felt possible with him here.

I thought we had years left. I wasn’t ready for his story to stop at six.

When He Got Sick

We didn’t know it yet, but the chapter of safety was ending. Looking back, it was months of guessing and hoping. We tested for cancer, GI issues, autoimmune diseases… everything. We never got a real diagnosis. Every vet had a different theory, every test contradicted the last one, and his body was getting more tired by the week.

He had always been a resilient little tank with weird seasonal quirks, so at first, we thought it was just another flare-up and that he would bounce back like he always did.

Then one day, the routines that made our life feel safe started to change. By late summer, he had started dropping weight. Too much weight.

After seeing multiple vets who were just as confused as we were, one prescribed steroids, which gave us a three-week glimmer of hope, our last glimpse of our boy again.

For a little while, it was like nothing was wrong. He ran around. He climbed things again. He greeted us at the door like normal. We let ourselves breathe for the first time in months.

By October, he looked like a ghost of himself, and right after Halloween, everything shifted. It felt like the ground falling out from under us.

He stopped eating as much. He chose the cold kitchen over the warm rooms we tried to keep him in. And for the first time, I understood this wasn’t a flare-up anymore. This was different, even though we kept telling ourselves it wasn’t.

Even still, we had no idea that the thing we were treating and monitoring all summer would be the reason he wasn’t here this fall.

That uncertainty was its own kind of torture. There was no name to blame, just the slow realization that love and effort were not going to be enough to keep him here. I felt that old grief waking up in my bones.

The end began with him picking at his food. Then he stopped jumping on the couch. Vet visits turned into more blood draws and quiet rooms. We did fluids, meds, and everything else we were told to do. We knew it was serious, but no one could tell us how much time we had left.

The Night Everything Changed

I will not describe every detail of that night, because some things are too sacred and too painful to lay out piece by piece. But I will tell you the truths that matter.

We had been trying to help him for months now. He wasn’t eating. He wasn’t himself. We thought we had more time. Not much time, but some. Enough to try more. Enough to hope.

When we brought him home from the vet that day, something inside me dropped. The second I saw him, I knew. His energy felt different. His breathing felt different. The space around him felt different. He was not just tired.

I told the vet, “He looks more lethargic than is normal for him,” but it came out thin and shaky. I think she knew too. She just wanted us home together.

When we got inside, it felt heavy, and I hated that Jon had to leave to get food, but we hadn’t eaten in three days, and we didn’t think we were here yet. Neither of us thought it would be this fast. I don’t think either of us let ourselves imagine it.

I didn’t want Wesley to be alone, but I also knew Jon didn’t understand yet what my body was already preparing for. My mind kept whispering that I was overreacting, but my body was already grieving. All I could think was, "No, not this, not now, not him."

I remember begging myself to be wrong, but the dread was already rooted in my chest. I knew, and I hated that I knew.

While Jon was out, I kept watching Wesley’s chest rise and fall, these tiny, shallow breaths that didn’t look like him at all.

I said his name, reached for him, told him I was right there, but he didn’t turn toward me. He didn’t react. Wesley never ignored me. Ever.

That was the moment the dread started climbing up from my stomach like it already knew what my mind refused to accept.

His pupils started going in and out, getting bigger and smaller with his breath, and he wouldn't look at me. I called Jon, panicking. Begging him to leave the food, just drop it and run, just come home. I knew Wesley was waiting for him, and I knew I wasn't strong enough to do this alone, if at all.

I was terrified. Losing my Dad already took years from my life. This felt like stepping back into the same fire. I did not know if I could survive witnessing this loss, but I knew being with Wesley for it was the last thing I could truly do for him as his Mom, so I did.

When Jon was almost home, Wesley sensed it the same way he always had. In those minutes before Jon returned, Wesley finally looked at me without lifting his head. I felt the universe shifting. I felt the tilt.

Then, somehow, he pushed himself up with a strength he had not had in days and stumbled to the back door. He was waiting for Jon. He wanted his family together.

For days, he had been pulling away from my hands, and it shattered me. I knew he was not rejecting me. He just did not want anyone touching him while he felt so awful, even though all I wanted was to scoop him up and hold him as close as I could.

Jon finally walked in and went to Wesley, who looked at him, then turned and gathered the last strength in his body to run to me.

He had been hiding for days so I wouldn’t see his pain, but in the end, he wanted me there. His steps were uneven and desperate, like each one cost him pieces of himself he did not have anymore.

He collapsed beside me.

I tried not to scream, I tried to let him go in the most peaceful way possible, but I was sobbing harder than I ever knew I could.

As much as we didn't want him to go, we knew he didn’t want to leave just as much. He didn’t want us to hurt. He didn’t want to abandon the life he built with us.

In those last moments, all he knew was that the three of us were together, that Jon was his Dad, that I was his Mom, and I know that's all he wanted in that moment.

Everything after that happened too fast to understand in real time. His body tensed. His breathing changed. I held my hand on him and kept talking because it was the only thing left I could do. I remember wishing I could rip time apart with my hands to stop it.

He chose us, again, one last time. He reached for me with his paws like a child reaching for their mother. I started telling him, “I’m right here, Mom’s here, I love you so much, you were the best thing that ever happened to me,” over and over because I didn’t know what else to do.

And then it came. That was it.

The world went dark. The room sounded like it was underwater.

Jon’s voice felt a mile away.

My life felt a million miles away.

In one moment, he was there, holding on with everything he had left, fighting to stay with us, and the next, he was gone, in this impossibly unfair way that didn’t match the love or the life he gave us.

He just slipped out of a world that wasn’t kind enough to give him more time. Our life had split into a “before him” and an “after him.”

I asked Jon if it was okay for me to scream now, and I did. I screamed and wailed for hours until my body gave out. After that, everything is a blur.

The Aftermath

Grief did not just stay in my heart. It moved into my body.

It lives in my chest when I wake up and forget, if only for a glorious half second, that he is gone. It lives in my throat when I try not to cry, and in the pit of my stomach when it hits me all over again.

It shows up in my posture, in the way I curl inward without meaning to, like I am bracing for a weight that is not coming.

It follows me through rooms and in places I did not know could hurt.

The house feels different, but the harder part is that I feel different. Like my body is still waiting for him to come back. Sometimes I still catch myself glancing at the back door, waiting for him to beat Jon there, even though I know he can’t anymore.

Wesley and Eugene when he was scared of fireworks one night and came to check on me.

Joy feels harder to access. Time feels slower.

My body just keeps moving even when my heart doesn’t want to.

Jon and I are grieving him differently, but the ache lives in both of us.

We still haven’t moved his things. We can’t.

Eugene, his favorite stuffed animal, a pink unicorn, is exactly where he left him. Jon still wears the Catfather hat Wesley “got” him for Father’s Day.

We always celebrated Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as a family of three, and those days already held more weight for us than anyone knew.

Wesley on Mother’s Day 2024

I can’t imagine how we’ll get through them now.

I loved him more than I love myself. I would have given anything for more time. Six was too young. He was a baby. He was irreplaceable.

I’ve loved before. I’ve lost before. But nothing prepared me for losing him.

If his love taught me anything, it is that my heart is not broken in a way that makes it useless. It is broken in a way that proves it worked.

In my dreams, I’m hugging him. He’s in my arms. He’s healthy. He’s warm. He’s close. It feels like a visit, like reassurance, like he’s saying, “I’m okay, Mom. I love you so much. I'm right here, too. We're still a family."

I picture him with my Dad. Safe. Together. Outside of time. Eternal.

And even though it hurts down here on Earth… it helps to know they're together.

What I Want Him To Know

I kept circling the same thought, the same ache, the thing I couldn’t let go unsaid. If I could talk to him one last time, I would tell him what I told him the night he died, and every morning before that.

He was the best thing that ever happened to me.

He made my life worth living.

He was the light of my days, and I will carry him with me forever.

I’ve learned that loving this deeply will always come with risk. I would choose that risk a thousand times over for him. The only thing I regret is not getting more time. Not because the love wasn’t enough, but because it was. Because he was.

He would want to be remembered. He would want his stories told.

He would want his life to mean something long after he left the room.

And yes, he would absolutely be jealous if another cat showed up too quickly. His ego was enormous in the funniest, most lovable way.

But he would also want us to love again, and I hope we do. We'll know it's right when it feels like Wesley sent them to us.

If he could have spoken back, I know what he would have said.

“I stayed alive because of you. I held on longer because I loved you. You were my home. You are not losing me. My body is just not working anymore. You both were more than enough for me. I'm not scared. I had you. I chose you in life, and I will choose you in death. I will not be gone, I will be everywhere you go, forever."

I know that as deeply as I know my own name.

Why I Needed to Write This

There was no way to move forward or write about anything else until I wrote this for him. I couldn’t just come back here and pretend everything was fine. I needed him to stay alive in some form. I needed people to know how important he was to me. I needed this written before I could be myself again, whatever that means from now on.

If you ever felt comforted by my words, by anything I’ve created, I need you to know a lot of that softness came from him. He trained my heart to be gentler, even when the world was not.

I’m not removing his photos. I’m not taking him out of old posts. He will always be part of my world. Wesley was the best cat in the entire world.

He changed everything. And no matter how much time passes, I will always be his Mom.

What His Love Leaves Behind

Wesley’s spirit did not just fill our home. He changed what I believe about who I am and what I am worthy of. Before him, I had this quiet fear that I was only accepted when I was easy and convenient. That I had to perform for my right to exist and be liked, let alone loved.

He never once asked for that version of me. He chose the crying girl on the couch, the anxious girl, the girl who still misses her Dad. He made a home inside the parts of me I tried to hide. He looked straight where I felt most unlovable, and moved right in anyway.

The evidence of his love used to live in every corner of our home. Now it has to survive inside me.

Wesley's first Christmas

That is what hurts the most now. It is not only that he is gone. It is that the proof is no longer walking from room to room, knocking over the Christmas tree, stealing yogurt, and slow-blinking at me from the windowsill.

The tiny marks from his claws on the arm of the couch feel like proof he was real. I find his fur on my sweaters, and instead of cleaning it off, I press it between my fingers like treasure.

I still catch myself listening for the tiny sounds of him chewing on something he wasn’t supposed to, my secret favorite part of his chaos...

I miss the sound of his paws hitting the floor. The way the house used to answer our return before we even turned the key.

Now the silence feels like punishment for getting to love him that much.

So, without wanting to, I am learning to do something that feels impossible. I am trying to believe I am still the girl he loved, even without his weight on my chest or his paws on my face at 5am.

I am trying to trust that the version of me who was hopeful, motherly, and brave is still here, even if she is buried under all this grief.

If You Are Grieving Too

If you have followed me for a while and loved Wesley through a screen, I am hugging you, too. Thank you for letting me share him with you.

I know every pet parent says their animal was special, but he really was. The details are mine, but if you’ve ever had a pet who felt like your missing piece, I know you’re already seeing your own baby in these stories.

I know I am not the only one learning how to walk through a house that feels wrong without someone. If you are reading this with your own heart cracked open over an ‘I love you’ that you will never get over, I want you to know this:

Jon and Wesley napping

The world will try to rank grief like it is a contest. It is not. Loss is loss. Connection is connection. Love is love.

Maybe you are sitting on the bathroom floor with your pet’s collar in your hand. Maybe you are sleeping on one side of the bed because the other side still feels like theirs. You are not ridiculous for feeling split in half over a pet. You are immensely human for having your life rebuilt by a small, holy creature who met you where the world hurt and healed parts of you that you did not know were broken.

And if your baby is still here, give them an extra kiss for us tonight and tell them they are your whole world. Say the thing out loud that you would never want to regret not saying.

So, when you see me slow-blink at someone I love, when you hear me talking about Wesley years from now, when you notice I am softer than the girl who met you years ago, when you see me try to love another fur baby again, know this...

That is him. That is my boy.

That is his love, still moving through my hands, my words, my days.

He was not just part of my life. He was the reason it felt like a life.

I will spend the rest of my days trying to live up to the love he saw in me. The Mom he thought I was. The woman who let love soften her, not harden her.

The house still feels wrong, but grief is only the echo of love. And Wesley was loud.

I am still figuring out how to write, how to cook dinner, how to laugh, with this new weight in my chest. I do not have a neat ending for that yet, but I know I want to live a life he would be proud to watch. Eventually, you have to stand up in the version of life that grief left behind.

If you still see me talking about recipes, beauty, routines, all the everyday things, please know that none of that means I am ‘over’ my boy. It just means I am trying to build a life that can hold both this grief and the small good things that are still here. He would want that for me. He trained me for that.

I am terrified most days, but I am not willing to let his love stop at the edge of my grief. I will never be ready to say goodbye to him, so I won't.

He's safe in my heart, in my Dad’s arms, listening for our footsteps, waiting for me and Jon to finally come through the door again.

He knows where we are and how to find us in the meantime, and he knows when we'll get home, like he always did.

And when we finally walk through that door, he will run to meet us.

For now, down here, we are still learning how to live in this version of home. We still step over his toys, trying to build a life on top of this fault line.

I love you, Wesley.

It was the greatest honor of my entire life to know you, to love you, and to be your Mom.