My Love
I Miss You So Much. I can’t stop thinking about you.
34 Responses to “My Love”
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About Tommy
On July 29, 2009, Tommy Botell was killed by a rock retaining wall that collapsed while hiking with his family at Lassen Volcanic National Forest.
Tommy's sister Katrina, was seriously injured and suffered numerous facial fractures.
Tommy was a dedicated scout, a fan of Indiana Jones, a budding adventurer and a beloved son and brother.
Tommy died in the loving arms of his mother. He was 9 years old.
This site is dedicated to his memory and keeping that memory alive.
I think about you every night when I close my eyes and every day when my eyes are open. I think of you all the time. I will never stop thinking of you.
You will always be my little superman. Love you,
Katrina
I miss sleeping on your bed at night.
I miss playing with you.
A piece of me is gone.
I never went a day without seeing you, today I have gone two months. I miss you.
Tommy Our Tommy
It’s not getting any easier. I will love you and miss you forever.
How do I “do” Christmas without my son? How do I “do” 30-40 years of living? The “order of life” is not suppose to go this way.
Tommy, It’s raining today. I think the angels are crying with the rest of us.
Grandma Barbara.
I miss you.
It has been three months today. I am learning to go on and live with the emptiness and pain. People told me I would, but I didn’t believe them. I still cry everyday but I am trying to find ways to make my pain into happy things. I miss you, Tommy. I still can’t stop thinking about you. When I go into your room it feels like you are just away at school. Everything is just how it was. I wish that was true in real life….I wish I could turn back time.
Missed you tonight, Tommy. You loved Halloween. I saw a couple of little boys in superman costumes. It was a little hard to take. You’re always on my mind, little buddy. I miss you.
Hey Buddy,
Your little spirit is all over the place. Good things are happening in your honor, baby boy. Keep up the good works. I am proud of you. I love you so much. You are my angel boy.
Love, Your Mommy
Katrina was able to open her mouth wide enough to eat her first hamburger, since the night before the accident. She is getting better, Tommy. It is very good news. I am happy and I am sad.
I miss you, sweetheart.
Hey Buddy,
I watched video of you last night. I got to hear you say “Mama” again. It was just what I needed. It made me so happy. Today is going to be a great day. Enjoy your day in Paradise, sweetheart. I will see you soon. I love you!
Love, Your Mommy.
I love you.
I’ve been so busy, but have never stopped thinking about you, my love. I am trying to get things back to “normal” around here. It is hard. Everything was turned upside down when you left us. I am trying…really really trying.
I was blessed with 9 years, 11 weeks, and 1 1/2 days.
If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane.
I would walk right up to Heaven.
And bring you back again.
No farewell words were spoken,
No time to say “Goodbye”.
You were gone before I knew it,
And only God knows why.
My heart still aches with sadness,
And secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you-
No one can ever know.
But now I know you want me
To mourn for you no more;
To remember all the happy times.
Life still has much in store.
Since you’ll never be forgotten,
I pledge to you today-
A hollowed place within my heart
Is where you’ll always stay.
We love you Tommy, on this Thanksgiving Day I am thankful to have known you, to have laughed and played with you, swam and hiked with you, lost to you at Uno and beat you at Yahtzee, got you galoshes so you could stomp in muddy puddles, and cuddled on the couch with you, and to have had you call me Grandma, but none of it was for long enough, it could never have been meant to be so short a time, its just all wrong. Love, G-Ma Carolyn.
Love Never Dies
It has been 4 months today. These have been the hardest months of my entire life. I have never cried so much. Although, to me, it seems like time has been standing still…it hasn’t it has been moving forward. Since you’ve been gone, school has started, we have celebrated Brittany’s 11th birthday, Katrina’s 14th birthday, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Next is Christmas…by far your favorite of all holidays. I am going to try to make it special. I am not feeling well today. I am missing you. Whenever I say that I am missing you and Brittany is around, she always replies with “Of course, you are. We’ll always miss him.” She is right…we’re always missing you, baby boy.
I am beginning to look up at the mountain and not think of it as the “mountain that took you away from me” but as the “mountain that you loved”. I will not let something that you enjoyed haunt me, Tommy. I will savor your likes and make them my own. I love you.
Tomorrow night is the Reeds Creek Christmas Program. We will be doing a remembrance of you, Tommy. Merry Christmas, baby.
Why Why Why…
And so we enter into a new year, and a new decade, and we must do it without Tommy alive and beside us, but with his memory alive and within us all the time, that is not what we want, it is not right, but it is all we have, and so it must be, those of us left behind must try to see the sunshine in each day even though it may be through out tears. G-Ma Carolyn
You are my “Son”-shine, my only “son”-shine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you’ll never know Dear how much I love you, so please don’t take my “son”-shine away. I used to sing that song to you. It may be the last thing you heard before you left me. I love you, Tommy. I used to say “You are the son/sun and I am the planet…therefore, I revolve around you, baby”. I still believe that. You are my sunshine….
I can’t get you out of my mind. People look at me and they talk to me, but they have no idea that it is you that I am thinking of. I try to carry conversations but my mind keeps going back to you. I try to get everything that happened straight in my head. I may never fully understand it all but I feel I must try. I am a seeker of knowledge and answers. I can’t let things go. I know that my loss is Heaven’s Gain..but why my child? Why my Tommy? People say things while around me and they have no idea that it may be sparking a memory. People stand next to me and they have no idea that my heart is broken. They can’t see the wound that lies within me. A wound that will never heal. I have been hurt so deeply. My baby has been taken from me. I lay awake at night and think, “Please, just give him back to me. I read God can raise the dead. Why not my son? Did I not pray hard enough that day on the mountain?” I take extra long showers to wash away my sorrow. The tears run down the drain, they leave no trace, not even on my face. People don’t see my pain. I see moms with their boys and I yearn for a little tiny piece of that joy and love. I had it once. I never took it for granted. I appreciated my boy so much. I counted my blessing every day. I knew just how blessed I was. I know that I didn’t deserve any of it…not any of it. But what did I do so wrong? How could this happen? I am told your wounds were severe. You bled inside your chest cavity. They couldn’t have saved you if it had happened in front of an operating table. I go over this in my mind. I try to picture it in my head. You were so perfect on the outside of your body. Inside you were bleeding to death. They talk in Yoga about feeling the blood circulate through the body to the heart, feel the heart pumping the blood. They have no idea that I am thinking about the blood filling up inside your chest cavity. People see me but they do not really see me. They have no idea what I am thinking or how I am feeling. Thank goodness. I go through the motions. I am just another person in a room full of people. We all have problems. We all have hurt and been hurt. We all suffer. I am not alone. So many people are trying their best to make it in this broken world. Do we ever stop and think what the person standing next to us may be going through? They may be like me…trying to hide a wound.
I stumbled around the internet and found this poem by David Harkins. It is perfect.
REMEMBER ME!
Do not shed tears when I have gone
but smile instead because I have lived.
Do not shut your eyes and pray to God that I’ll come back
but open your eyes and see all that I have left behind.
I know your heart will be empty because you cannot see me
but still I want you to be full of the love we shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live only for yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of what happened
between us yesterday.
You can remember me and grieve that I have gone
or you can cherish my memory and let it live on.
You can cry and lose yourself become distraught
and turn your back on the world
or you can do what I want – smile, wipe away the tears,
learn to love again and go on.
*I can’t go on. I must go on. I’ll go on.
*Line taken from Samuel Beckett’s novel ‘The Unnameable.’
I miss you, baby. I just plain miss you. Nothing more, nothing less.
Thinking about you. Wishing I could turn back time.
Happy Thanksgiving Tommy. Missing you…as always.
I hate that you are not here. I miss you so much. Life should not be this way.