It's all plot.

There's this thing that happens, more often lately than before. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's just...a thing.

As we've started focusing really hard on cleaning and sorting and shedding all of the *stuff* we collected over the years we're uncovering all sorts of things. Stuff that makes me say, "why on earth did we keep that!?" or, "oh wow, I've been wondering where that went."

We don't need this anymore, that was a stress purchase, this is from when they were toddlers, wow.

Those jeans haven't fit in ten years! Heh.

But the thing that happens as I pull boxes out and sift through the usual opened credit card applications I meant to shred, and the water bill from two years ago - the piles of paper that were covering the counter and you just don't have the energy to sort so you chuck it in a box and call it good.

There's a drawing with Gus written on the back. And all of the air leaves the room in a flash.

It's a box you put together purposely before he even died, of things that you knew you'd want later.

And it's just unexpected. You forget you'd been stashing those things since May of 2015.

You had his signature tattooed over your heart because you knew deep inside that one day you would let go of the papers he'd written on and it would never get any more advanced.

And now you were just going to shred all those old bills but without warning you have to decide whether to keep this piece of paper or put it in the recycling bin. It's easy with Charlie's. His will be replaced over and over again, only the really unique things are kept so that he can look back many years from now and see his history. Then decide if it's memories he wants to keep longer or let them go.

Memorializing your child changes your perspective on letting go. Some parents can never let go of anything again. Sometimes it gets easier. 

That thing cannot replace my child. How much of his memory does it hold, and does it bring me joy.

The seventeenth "weekly work" page is easy. No, jesus, chuck it.

But this drawing, do I know when he made it? Do I know what it is? Is it just his name that catches me?

Once the first page pops up and you breathe through the surprise and make the choice, you spend the rest of your sorting preparing to find more, to choose. The further you get the easier it is to smile and file it in the recycling.

It's a thing that happens that every parent goes through to some extent, usually at the end of the school year when everything comes home.

But it's just slightly different for us.

It's a thing.

Do I keep the last prescriptions he was given for the intense drugs we used to keep him comfortable while he died? 

Or not. 

They are simply gone.

Hazel Anne was seven months old when she was diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma. She and Gus shared the same doctors, and nurses. From diagnoses to surgery, to radiation and on, we have shared our entire journey with the lovely Miss Hazel. Sadly, she had recurrent tumors diagnosed when Gus started chemo in January of 2013.

I put her MRIs on my calendar so I knew when to be there to support her mom through the stress. Her mother was who I reached out to when I scheduled Gus' - only she knows what that day feels like. It was through Hazel's mother I knew of Campbell Hoyt, whom I spoke of previously.

Recently Hazel's disease progressed and she had another round of radiation to hopefully shrink the tumors a bit, and give her relief. She was doing so well.

Last night Hazel was admitted to the hospital for pain control and quite unexpectedly...left. She was just three years old.

There are not words enough in any language to express what the loss of a child does to your heart. There is no way to say "I am so sorry" to her parents with the weight if what it feels like to know that she is gone, and there is nothing at all that will console them, and her grandparents, her entire family.

There is a hole in the world today.