When you miss somebody

You miss all of them. When you miss somebody you don’t just miss them as they were a few months or years ago, you miss them running around in diapers with curls bouncing and baby teeth grinning. When you miss somebody, you miss their moods – good bad and ugly. When you miss somebody you miss their laugh, their cry and the occasional laughing snort. I miss her plumber’s crack (plumber’s daughter and all) her tiny teeth, the freckle in her eye and her fire. I miss our childhood, running around on 5 acres in our birthday suits playing in the hose. I miss the way she would fill in my memories, I don’t know if I will ever remember anything correctly now. I miss her perfectly round nostrils, but I have a living breathing pair of those in my house now. I tuck her in every night and look at those circular nostrils and think – she is not dead. She is here. And then my tears betray me and I realize that Hailey is gone, but I have the best gift she could have given anybody.