8 Months and 28 Days

Eight months and Twenty-Eights Days. The length of our older son Micah’s life here on earth. Today, February 11, 2011, marks the day that our second son Owen reaches exactly the same age. It is a day of mixed emotion for Heather and me.

On the one hand, we are grateful that God has ordained Owen’s days on earth to number at least as many as Micah’s. We are blessed by each day with Owen. To wake up every morning to see Owen’s smiling face is yet another gift from God, a gift that we don’t take for granted.
On the other hand, we grieve the relative brevity of Micah’s earthly life. It seems like just yesterday that Owen was born. This short span of time is all that we had with Micah. It’s hard to believe that this little vapor of a life, came, lived and died in such a short period of time. It all seems just so very short, and we are grieved by all these days that we are living on earth without him.

A few days before Micah died, we hired a photographer to take photos of Micah, which of course are now highly prized by Heather and me. At the time we planned on later supplementing these “9 Month” pictures with numerous other pictures. Later today, Owen is also having pictures taken by a photographer. We look forward to seeing and sharing pictures of Micah and Owen, side-by-side, taken at exactly the same age.

But we don’t expect that this will be the last time that Owen’s pictures are taken. Lord willing, we will add to our personal photo collection of Owen at ball games, school events, birthday parties, holidays, and maybe a school graduation (or two!). Every milestone and every photo opportunity will be bittersweet, for while we can view pictures of Owen’s milestones, there will be no such pictures to view of Micah’s milestones. It seems that in some ways today is the day when the similarities end, and the differences begin.