Bracelets

I have a bug. A little bug to be sure, but it is enough to keep me from feeling completely well. This is the time of year that Colby always got sick. Just after his birthday. I remember countless first or second weeks in October spent in the hospital with Colby struggling to breathe. When Colby was born his lungs collapsed and he spent eight days in intensive care. After that we had issues with asthma. Upper respiratory infections. His chest laboring to rise and fall.

In my daily perusal of Colby's stuff, today I find most of his hospital bracelets. Each time he was admitted he was issued one, and each one brings back a memory. That's the year he had the boy who was receiving treatment for cancer for a roommate. That year I broke my foot in the hospital parking lot. There, that's the first one, the year that was the scariest, before we knew what childhood asthma was all about.

I am surprised he kept the bracelets, although I shouldn't be. By now we all know that Colby kept everything. But I am glad he saved them. They help me remember. Good times and scary times. Fear and relief. I put the bracelets back in the box he kept them in and put them with other items I know I will save. For a while. I know I can't keep it all, don't want to keep it all, that I will have to at some point revisit this growing "Save" pile and fine tune it. Refine it. Whittle it down. But for now the bracelets bring mostly good memories and it makes me feel good to know they are there, safe on a shelf in the room that is still, for a little while longer, Colby's.