312 pictures.

That's the sum of my son's life in photos.

I know because I counted every single one, days after he died.

11 years ago today, I looked like this:

It's okay. You can totally laugh and call me a beached whale. I still twitch when I see that picture. I mean, really, how sexy can one gal get?

Less than 24 hours later came this photo:

Shale didn't yet have casts on his clubbed feet and I remember being horrified by the tubes and his crooked little feet. I didn't want to touch him. I was scared he'd break even further. I was stuck in this odd limbo of grief for not having a perfect baby and the horror of not knowing what to do with a broken one.

Then came the big button incident of '01.

My lovely child couldn't control his tongue and it kept falling back and blocking off his airway. Any time he was flat on his back or upright he'd choke on it. So the all knowing doctors stitched it to his lower inside lip in the hopes he'd be able to finally get off his stomach.

Three weeks later, he did.

Only to go back flat on his back again.

One lesson I quickly learned in the early moments of Shale's life is just when you think things can't get worse, they can.

Oh life and your silly little lessons, mocking my naiveté.

There was a lot of tubes and wires, surgeries and casts, transfusions and general hospital chaos filled panic but eventually it all led to this:

Shale finally came home.

His first birthday found me unprepared. I figured I wouldn't make a cake since he couldn't eat it but it didn't seem right to deprive his sugar loving siblings of cakey-goodness, so I bought donuts as a happy compromise. It became our January 4th tradition while he lived.  Of course, while I remembered to buy donuts I completely spaced on birthday candles.

Oh well, beggars can't be choosers and all that.

The days blurred by with doctors appointments, hospitalizations and the haziness of life in general.

He grew hair, learned to sit and give high fives.

He grew. Even past the age they told us he wouldn't.

He learned to walk. He taught us how to live beyond the fringe of normal and see the world with new possibilities. He taught us how to be the people we are today. He loved.

And oh, how he danced.

And then, he didn't.

It's an odd thing to celebrate a birthday of a boy who no longer lives. But I suppose it is no odder than loving a child who is simply a memory.

Time slips by and nothing seems to change just as everything is.

My son is still gone. I still love him. Most don't even know he existed for the years he did.

But today, as the sun shines through the parted clouds and glistens off the snow riddled with footprints, my family will take a moment to recognize how much he gave us and how grateful we are for the moments we had with him.

Happy 11th birthday kid.