remember me this way...

This morning, my 3 year old son stood still in the middle of our living room looking at a photo on the wall. He's a bit "spacey", so I didn't think much of it and went about cleaning up. After a moment he looked at me and quietly said, "There's nothing in his nose."

Not knowing what he was talking about, I agreed with him and kept sweeping the floor. 

"I don't remember Nathan without stuff in his nose." My three old elaborated on his previous statement, grabbing my attention. 

LB didn't talk about his little brother's passing much. Occasionally if someone else brought it up, he might say something. But he never brought Handsome up. I didn't know if it was because he just didn't understand that his little brother went to Heaven or if it was too painful to talk about, but I let him be. I decided that if he had questions, he'd ask and then I'd answer. Other then that, we did our best to explain that Handsome was sick and he had to go live with God and we talked about him everyday, but we never pushed our three year old to participate in the discussions. 

So when LB brought up our angel family member, out of the blue, I stopped what I was doing and sat down with him. I noticed that all this time he had been looking at a photo that hung on our wall. The last family photo taking of us. I looked at the 20x30 canvas print that my friend Michelle had done for us and I, too, noticed that Handsome did not have tubes in his nose. I remembered how I had pulled the feeding tube that had inhibited Handsome's nose almost his whole life, out prior to our photo shoot, because I wanted to remember him without all the tape and tubes and wires. And I wanted my kids, his siblings to remember him that way, too. I explained this to LB, as he continued to look at the photo. 

"Nathan wasn't dead." His little voice stated and I nodded in confirmation. I told him that he was right. Handsome was still alive when we took the photo, last August. 

"I miss when Nathan was alive." I started to cry as my three year old's eyes watered at the memory of his baby brother's life. I told him I missed his brother, too. 

"I remember what Nathan looked like when he was dead." LB started talking about Handsome's funeral. "In that box. At that place." Tears fell from his eyes onto his cheeks. "I want to remember him like he is in that picture. I miss when he was that way. I wish he was not dead." 

I've always been a picture person. I'm that girl who in a house fire would run through flames to save her family photo album. But I never could have imagined how much a photo would mean to me until this morning when I saw how much the photo meant to my three old son. 

I pray someday the images of Handsome seizing and restricted to a bed with machines and tubes covering his body will fade from LB's memory and the moments we all shared with Handsome when he was "doing okay" will take their place. I hope someday my kids can look back on these pictures and remember Handsome this way.