I’m thinking about Kaleb this morning. Kaleb and Halloween and also another October morning, eleven years ago, when Kaleb was just a baby and I decided to put out the Halloween decorations.

Obviously he didn’t really do much that year, but every year after that, he’s been my Halloween compatriot. He went through a phase when the scary decorations for sale at stores would terrify him, but he still wanted me to push the cart through them anyway. He loved looking at costumes, talking about what he’d be for the year and remembering what he was in previous years.

He always helped me put out the Halloween decorations.

This year, though, he’s pretty much over Halloween. He doesn’t want to wear a costume that is hot, has a mask or any props to carry, or is uncomfortable in any way. He hasn’t looked at costumes in stores. And when I asked him if he wanted to help me put out the Halloween decorations on Sunday, he shrugged and said “no…it’s too early anyway.”

And my Halloween-loving heart broke a little bit.

The next day, I had a conversation with my oldest niece, who recently turned thirty and decided that her recent baby—her seventh!—would be her last. She talked about how she’d watched me struggle with being “done,” but how she could see that I eventually made peace with it, and that helped her decide her family was complete. I smiled and nodded and hugged her, but really: what happened isn’t what she thinks happened.

People talk about that—about realizing that they felt “done” with the size of their family, knowing that they were finished with babies when their last baby was born.

Maybe from the outside it looked like I had that experience, too. But really, I didn’t. I never felt done. I have always felt like I was missing a child, in between Nathan and Kaleb. What I had to make peace with was the fact that I will always live with that feeling, that I missed someone along the way.

And yes: I do feel done with babies. I have for a long time. But I think that other feeling, the one of missing a person, of my family feeling incomplete (a gap that is impossible to fill) makes it harder for me at every phase of Kaleb’s life. Harder to let go and move on, because each time he moves on I remember that it really is over. My days of anticipating another new life coming to me. That missing child is entwined with Kaleb in ways that are hard for me to explain but still undeniable. Maybe because he was just one baby but had to take the place of two.

This morning I decided that I’d put out the Halloween decorations. It’s the first time in my life, since I became an adult with actual Halloween decorations to put out, that I did it myself. Each little object is wrapped with memories, visible only to me, of each of my kids, but they are strongest with Kaleb because he is the last, and he was the one who cared about it the longest. I set out the pumpkins, the ghosts, my Catrina witch from Mexico, the Halloween quilts, the Halloween cats. I washed the Halloween dishes and spread out the Halloween tablecloth. I remembered all of the little things I own an love that are imbued with Halloween memories. And I thought, and I remembered, and I tried to put into words what I was feeling.

Yes: I’m done with babies. And I am happy with the place I am at in my life. But sometimes that old sorrow grabs me, like it did this morning. How does a grown woman find herself weeping over a Halloween cat and a fleur-de-lis pumpkin? It’s to do with regret, with looking back and wishing I could have held on longer, somehow, to those fleeting days of having littles. They were hard days, but good ones, too, just like right now is also hard and also good. But what I wouldn’t give, even though I am done with babies, even though I have made peace with carrying the missing—even though, what I wouldn’t give to be able to scoop up that baby right out of the photo and hold him in my arms and smell his neck and hear his little sounds.

What my niece doesn’t know, what time will teach her, is that while you can come to a place where you are done with babies, there will always be things that remind you how much you loved babies. And then you will remember that there will never be any more for you, and even with the peace, even with the goodness, there is still, also, sadness. You might be done with babies…but you are never done with your babies.