Best Buddies

I will share some halloween stories and pictures soon but thought this quick story was worthy of sharing. As background information, we lost Dean's dad to pancreatic cancer 3.5 years ago. It was a very fast, hard battle with diagnosis being made early January (I want to say the 5th) and he passed away on February 8th. Ben was 7 months old when he lost his "papa." Dean and his dad were extremely close and Ben and his papa also shared a special relationship in their short time together. Ben not only bears a remarkable resemblance to Fred when comparing old photographs, but he also talks about Papa pretty often and really acts like he remembers him. We do talk about Fred, but find it amazing and frankly kind of freaky sometimes how much Ben seems to "remember" about him. Today I was making lunch and Ben started scribbling like a wild man on his incredible hulk dry erase board. I asked him what he was doing and he said "sending a message to Papa. When I scribble on my hulk board the message goes to heaven to my papa." I asked Ben what he was writing to Papa, to which he said "Oh, I'm just sort of missing him so I am telling him hi and that I hope he feels better and will come back to the world someday because I miss him and want to see him." It broke my heart but was also so sweet. I like to think that Fred checks in on all of us and the sweet faithfullness of my Ben makes me even more confident that Papa is still with us.