ad astra per aspera

Dear Chris,
Our sons 3 year-old brain is struggling with the concept of death.
He’s asked me if daddy is going to get better and if he is at the hospital.  I re-explain that daddy is dead and what that means.
Today he was playing with the stethoscope you gave him, the yellow one from one of your trips to the Austin hospital.  He listened to my heartbeat and I listened to his.  I explained that when someone dies their heart stops beating and they stop breathing.  I’ve told him that you were cremated.  He of course asks what that means and why you were cremated.
I told him that he and I will be moving into our own house in the future and he’ll have his own room and so will I.  He asked if daddy will have a room.  And I say no, daddy is dead.  We don’t get to see daddy ever again.
I’ve learned and read that it’s best to be as direct as possible about a death to a child his age.  He tells me he misses you a lot.  I tell him that I miss you too.  He told me today that he wants to grow a silly mustache like you had.  He makes me laugh.
It’s looking like Magnus & I will be moving into a nice duplex in Eudora around June 1st.  Unpacking our belongings is going to be hard.  Remember how you insisted on it being your writing that labeled almost every box and plastic tub?  My hand-writing is pretty wretched.
There have been such strange coincidences since you died.  Well first remember when we were waiting for the judge to marry us and I looked at his docket and the guy before us was “Christopher Crane”?
Dr. Lux is the name of the doctor that signed your death certificate.
A week after you died and I had to go to the ER and they admitted me for 16 or so hours and I was admitted to room 318, also the date of your death.
The address of the duplex is 1318 Ash street, ASH also being my initials.
Magnus is snoring softly next to me with his hand resting on my arm.  He worries that something is going to happen to me too.  He says he is going to miss me too.  I tell him I’m not going anywhere, that it’s me and him from now on.  It will take time, he lived away from us for 8 months.  And now the “us” is him and I, not you and him and I.
These words I type to you are still so grossly inadequate to describe any of this.
I love you,
boks