February stole you from us.
The world kept turning,
but ours paused,
trying to understand
how someone so full of life
could suddenly become
a memory.
You fought longer
than anyone should ever have to.
And when your fight was over,
our love for you wasn’t.
Two months later,
on April 9,
a little boy entered this world.
I looked at him
and knew there was only one name
that belonged to him.
Theo.
Not because names erase grief.
They don’t.
But because some people
leave footprints too deep
to be washed away by time.
Now your name is spoken
through laughter.
Called across playgrounds.
Written on birthday cakes.
Whispered into sleepy goodnights.
A little boy who never got to meet you
carries a piece of you
every single day.
One day,
when he’s old enough,
I’ll tell him about the cousin
whose name he wears.
About the man
who loved deeply,
wandered fearlessly,
and faced unimaginable pain
with quiet strength.
I’ll tell him
that he wasn’t named
after a tragedy.
He was named
after a life.
A life worth remembering.
A life worth honoring.
So every April,
when we celebrate Theo,
we celebrate you, too.
Because love has a way
of refusing to disappear.
Sometimes…
it simply finds
another heartbeat
to carry it forward.
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