Dear Roger, Remembering Things Past and my ,"Issue" with Turning 21 for the 20th Time

Well, the inevitble happens Monday and though it is showing promise of passing by most everyone unnoticed, it promises to be one that will be particularly gut-wrenching for me. If ever I needed you to be here as my calm before the storm, my slightly sarcastic but always understanding voice of reason, it is for this one.This birthday falls on the 15th anniversary of the Murrah building, and for soo many reasons that is fucking ripping my heart and mind apart. Everytime I close my eyes I dream about her, and I see her in his arms.She would be around 16 now, and I wonder what her life would have been like, would she have been a typical Okie? Was the fact that my life changed so dramatically that day the reason I feel such a link to her, after all, that was the day it all changed for me, there was no more running,no more easy go of it,no more easy way out,I had to stand and fight, because the words of an unlikely named ,(Randolph Scott)doctor brought me to my knees,"Young lady,you are pregnant", and as I stood in the waiting room, watching the news feed on CNN with the rest of the patients, I needed you more than ever, but you were gone.When I found out I was pregnant that year,I thought about all that I was going to lose...I was promptly kicked out of paramedic school because the child would be due during clinical rotation,the father of the child did not want children and made that crystal clear in no uncertain terms on evening when I was alone in the ambulance station out in Welton.It was during this conversation with him that I learned the potassium, when injected in the vitreous humor of the eye, can stop a heart and leave no evidence of wrong doing, so after he made his opinion known in both my mind and body, I made sure that I hid from him for the next 14 years. Its hard to believe, when I look back at the pictures taken on the trip to LA with him, which were some of the times in my life when I looked so completely happy, that I would end up so completely scarred by him.I dont regret my son,he has kept me grounded and sane, and in many ways he reminds me of you,(when he is not being such and emo, skinny jean wearing modern man), but life has not been easy for either of us and I often wonder if I have made the right choices for him.
Seeing the image of Baylee Almon in that firefighters arms has haunted me, partly because of the day, the fact that I had found out I was going to be come a mother, and realization that as an EMT/Firefighter at the time, I felt the pain and helplessness he was feeling.
My birthday is a series of flashes of horror stories; the Branch Davidian Compound went up on that day, the explosion on the Iowa, and its just been surrounded by bad stuff like Colombine and other horrors for as long as I can remember,so for many years I refused to celebrate, and this year is feeling like another that will pass by in a particularly somber mood because my son isnt here, I am alone and as usual the wind is supposed to blow and its supposed to be cold.
I wish you were here to hang out with me on Monday, I was thinking I would go and have a beer and a smoke and just pay a silent tribute to the memory of a child that never got to grow up, and say a prayer of thanks for my son that is my angel that helps me to get past seeing all those horrors and count down the days until he is home.