Theo and I don’t go “all out” and celebrate Halloween, but we still like to hand out candy to the kids. This Halloween, our first without Archer, we struggled with everything. We didn’t want to hand out candy or even see kids in their costumes.
Thankfully, we had plans. We headed down to Illinois to get Theo a tattoo. This tattoo means more to me than any other tattoo will ever mean (until I get mine**). It’s Archer’s handprint at the exact size of when he passed. Then under it is his name. But not just his name. We bought him this arrow name sign for his nursery because we didn’t want a general round sign. The arrow was so fitting for his name, obviously. After Archer’s passing, Theo found a picture of the sign from the nursery and put it into his CAD software. He then rendered an image of it at the bottom of Archer’s handprint.
Theo put the tattoo right over his heart. Archer had daddy’s heart, and daddy had his. (I’m 100% okay with this). They were the best buds. I looked at Theo after I saw the tattoo and said, “I feel I can, in a way, finally hold my baby’s hand again.”
After the tattoo, we did some shopping and then headed home. Some friends invited us to hang out, so we headed over there a little later. As we pulled out of the driveway, there was a little boy dressed up as a Jedi. I like to believe that because Theo and I loved Star Wars, and so did Archer. He had an R2D2 lovey, many Star Wars clothes, a handful of Star Wars kid’s books, and his first Halloween costume was baby Yoda.
After we got home from hanging out with friends, I hopped on social media, which was the wrong thing to do. I saw all the littles in their costumes, and many of them were close to how old Archer would be. To look at them in their costumes, see how many teeth they have, see if they are walking – it’s an indescribable feeling.
While we honored Archer through the tattoo this weekend, the weekend was very reminding of everything we no longer have.
**It is suggested not to get a tattoo before going through our IVF stage because you can open up the opportunity for infection. This infection can delay IVF. Not to say others shouldn’t do this if they are going through IVF. It’s been my choice to do absolutely nothing that could delay our IVF process.
