Ache

It's sobering to love so much. Sometimes it's suffocating.

After baths and stories, jammies and lullabies, I visit my children after they have fallen asleep - their most angelic hour.

And sometimes I literally feel an ache of loving so much. When the details of the day are complete, when the spinning slows and the resting begins, sometimes that's the feeling that comes in its place. An ache of love.

I reach out so carefully, gently touch his hair or stroke his cheek, my touch as soft as a whisper.

And it suddenly occurs to me.

Robb doesn't get to touch them.

And as much as I rejoice for him, with varying degrees of envy (depending on the honesty of the day), that truth makes me feel sad for him.

I just have a hard time thinking he wouldn't miss that, even if everything else is perfect and whole and his.