The stars are there for us every night. We can chart where they will be now and in six months.
But every once in a while, you get to glimpse a shooting star. It streaks through the sky momentarily and then burns out quickly. If you blink, you will miss it. It’s gone before you can even point it out to someone else.
Some people in our lives are like that. You know they were there, and yet already they’re gone.
Joseph is my shooting star. It feels like I blinked, and he was gone. To the world at large, he never existed. He will never have a Social Security number, or a Facebook account. He will never be on a list of “Important People who died in 2021”. He never wore any of the clothes we had ready for him. He never even came to our house. Hardly anyone even got to see him in the short time we had with his body.
This week these feelings and thoughts came especially to the surface for me as we hit another milestone. Some time this last week, we crossed the moment when Joseph has been dead longer than he was alive.
That was so fast. Has he really been gone that long? How can I keep leaving him behind in time like that?
I have done what I can to remember Joseph, who has impacted my life so much. This blog and business has given me the chance to serve as a witness of his life. Not everyone has that chance to give their shooting stars a place and a name to be seen and remembered.
In my grief and my time away from social media this week, I created a new page for that. This page is so that none of us will have to remember alone.
If you want to submit a name, go to the “Joseph’s Stars” page and submit it to the form at the bottom. We accept all kinds of names, including “Baby _____” and all ages.
We would love to remember with you.
