Is a diagnosis harder than death….

Here's the thing. We had only begun processing Spencer's diagnosis when he got a second one.

We were still reeling. Still compiling the list of 12+ specialists we were going to need to get to know for the rest of his life.

We were still saying goodbye to the dreams we had for our family of four, when the doctors, and us, began to realize none of that would matter.

When it started to become apparent he would not be coming home.

He was a super snuggler

The two- his diagnosis and his death are intrinsically linked for me and my emotions. In a way, his diagnosis felt worse than his passing away. But it is because the emotions of his diagnosis had started to become real and to take over from the unknown we had been living.

So it wasn't that his passing was less emotional or easier. It is that I already had such emotion from the diagnosis, that the emotional weight that added to it when he passed didn't feel as heavy as it would have, if there hadn't already been such a heavy future so recently placed on us.

The emotion of that day...that is a totally different beast. One that still attacks at random. Seemingly out of nowhere and with no reason other than to remind me that the worst is much worse than anything I could possibly deal with before or after.

But his actual passing and his diagnosis are a combination that will forever feel confusing and heavy. His diagnosis should not feel heavier or worse than his passing, but it often does.

It is something we never had a chance to fully process or even begin to really process before we lost him. So it is something that still sits with us, alongside his loss. Holding hands.

The loss of what we thought of our future would be when he was first born, the loss of that dream and the total loss of his future with us at all.

Two futures gone. Neither a future we expected, and both ones we live with daily.

Diagnosis and death...they are somedays my weight, and they will be with me forever in big ways, small ways, just there.

Spencer was our little boy. One of my sunshines, and he will forever be. His diagnosis and his death do not fully define him, but they have certainly defined me.