birthday was the last thing we celebrated and shared as a whole family. Five days later life ended for Frac's little brother and none of us has ever quite recovered. That was the last photo we took of Shale. It was the night of Frac's birthday, the boys were high on attention and birthday cake and goofing off and when I saw the giant shadow on the picture I tossed the photo into the trash. Days later I dug it out because I couldn't bear to lose one single more piece of my dead son. This time of year is always rough on us. It's compounded and worsened by the fact that when we adopted Jumby, his birthday is Oct 21. The day Shale died. Six months after Shale died, my kids were floundering, my mental health was deteriorating, and my husband had left the building (literally) to start working out of town in an effort to cope with his grief. I didn't know what to do. I could barely breathe. But I couldn't sit for one more day and watch my children slide further into the pit of despair I was trapped in, so I went out and I got a dog. He wasn't the dog I wanted. The one I wanted was brown and white and barked a lot but the women who was giving me the dog, having heard my story, my loss, handed me this runt who never barked and said, "Trust me. He's the one