Life of Letter 10
marketing, design, travel, and my thoughtsArchive for Lukas
Still Seeing Green
Kami and I are still getting pics in and we love all of the support! There is still time to send us your pictures…we are accepting them through August 11, as that was the day one year ago when Lukas was born still. We have gotten quite a few pics but we are still short of our goal of 100. We will be donating $5 for each picture to either Faces of Loss or the March of Dimes in memory of our son.
Both of these organizations are wonderful. One helped us through our tragedy and the other is working to make babies stronger and help us understand and prevent baby loss.
Please email your pictures to kami@letter10pro.com
Thank you for helping us remember Lukas!
Opening Day – One Day Later
Well yesterday was a big day for my family…we are baseball fans. I even got a “Happy Opening Day” text message from mom! We have always been baseball fans and love it when the season starts. It means months of our favorite sport and it means the weather will be getting warmer! Both outstanding things to be kicked off.
Yesterday I was able to watch the Yankees pull off their 11th consecutive opening day home win while I sat at my desk and did my work. It was great to be able to follow along and still get things done! I continued to watch games when I got home (sorry dear…it will be a theme for the next few months).
And then it hit me. I realized that I was supposed to be sharing this family tradition with my son for the first time this year. I promise I am not going to write about everything this feeling hits me…I DO NOT want a depressing blog where people can see all the things that make me slide back into those rough times. I feel like I have been able to deal with our tragedy in as good a way as possible but there will always be instances like yesterday when, what was a really good day, got turned around emotionally.
It is so strange what things make your mind shift to experiences you won’t be able to share. A song, a picture, a conversation…apparently a baseball game on TV. It isn’t like this is some kind of live changing event for anyone…but it is something I will not get to enjoy with my son.
My Most Difficult Piece of Art
I have worked on some crazy art projects for clients, family and friends. Some of them would make you laugh…this one might make you cry. The most difficult piece of art that I have ever (and hopefully will ever) had to work on is the headstone for my son’s gravesite. If you have read my other posts you know the story of our son Lukas, so I am not going to get into the details. If you want to know the full story check out the Lukas Clark Moore post. It has taken us a long time to get this memorial done and we finally have a picture from the stone maker. I can’t wait for it to be set at the gravesite so we have something to visit.
I wanted this headstone to be special and illustrate the love that my wife and I have for our son without it being generic and the standard design people in our situation might use. I had already done an art piece for the wall in his room, that will never get made. My wife had found this fabric pattern and had planned to make the bedding for his crib out of it and my art piece used the same design to tie everything together. It only seemed fitting to incorporate this design into his headstone.
I am a weird guy sometimes, and I am fully aware of this. I think that strange things happen in life and the coinsidences surrounding them are often the strangest things of all. As you know by the name of my blog and business my name, Jay, is the 10th letter of the alphabet. My wife’s name starts with a “K” (11th letter) and we chose Lukas in part because it starts with the letter “L” (12th letter). We discovered after selecting this pattern that there were only 12 animals used. I can’t fight that coinsidence. We also ended up burying our son on August 12, 2010.
