Every October, usually the end of the second week, I get really sad. I’ve started to forget, but every year the changing leaves and Halloween decorations punish me with memories.

Fall of 2014, my baby was almost walking. He had been in physical therapy since we brought him home from NICU. And with his walker, he was pretty independent. With two hands, Grandma on one side and Chooks on the other, he was smiling bright, headed to the playground swings. Slightly crooked with slow pace, he moved step by step, looking at mommy.

We didn’t know it then, but he was dying. The cancer clouded his liver and we had a long battle ahead.

The night of his biopsy, all our parents were with us as he recovered from the surgery. Once they went home, it was just my baby and me. We would live that way for the next five months.

That night, with Halloween decorations on the walls and the colors of the trees, would be the worst night of my life. Worse than when he died.

That night I imagined what it would be like to live without my child. And everything I imagined came true. My baby would die of cancer, and in my heart I knew it.

That diagnosis hit us during my favorite time of year. Football, fall mornings, Halloween—I love it all.

But now something hits me in the gut the same time each year. I immediately feel like I’m right back in that room. Everyone’s gone, my baby is asleep in the crib next to me, and I’m trying to sleep, covered by hospital blanket in a 65 degree room.

I cried all night. I was losing my baby. And his loss had been threatening since his traumatic birth. We weren’t going to have him very long.

That diagnosis, combined with the triggers and traumas, take me down hard, every time I open myself to it. But if I try to stay closed off, it will hit me even harder, and even harder if it comes as a surprise.

So this fall, I am forgiving myself. It wasn’t my fault. And he was very sick. But I am going to remember that day he almost walked, the smile on his face, and the joy of becoming a big boy.

He’s a little boy forever now, but I am his mommy. His beauty and strength came partly from me. If he could be that wonderful, so can I.

He’s sent me signs every day this week. He knows his mama is hurting and he’s making it better. Every minion, cardinal, and rainbow he shows me prove that he’s as sweet in Heaven as he was in earth.