Dear Joseph

Tonight is your prom night. I can almost see you in my mind's eye, tall, slim, handsome, that shy smile that never ever left you. But yet I just can't. I can't see you really, because my mind can only conjecture how puberty would have changed your bone structure, your cheekbones, collarbones, the knobs of your knees and elbows, the spread of your shoulders, the taper of your hips. I have no idea what you would look like as a young man other than most likely lean and tall.

I miss tonight. I miss seeing you in your tux. I miss insisting to your dad that I get to accompany you to select it. I miss helping you order the corsage for your date and I miss even the pang of worry and nostalgia that I would feel as we take pictures and see you off on your way.

But as I thought over all of this tonight, I realized to a degree an overwhelming emotion I would be having would be......grief. Anticipatory grief. Because in another six weeks you would be graduating and a few months after that.....college. I'd be thinking about your childhood, all the things we have been through together, how you have changed my life. I'd be starting to miss you, deeply and painfully.

So in a sense, I already have some of what I would have, should have, could have had tonight. All those last emotions I already have faced, felt and continue to feel. You have moved past where I can see, and the only thing keeping me from dissolving tonight is the absolute, without a doubt certainty that wherever you are, you are most definitely not missing the fact that you would have, could have, should have been going to prom tonight. For some reason that is very clear to me. You aren't grieving it. And it has helped me grieve it less.

So wherever you are tonight, I hope there is glitter and magic and hope for the future. It is what I would have wanted for you tonight no matter what. I love you. I am missing you, every second, every day.

Love,
Mom