Close your eyes and think about what you've been missing in your life lately./TM Challenge fic

Wow, where do I even begin to respond to this?  I am at a point in my life that I never thought I would reach again, close to obtaining once more one of the hardest things I lost from my past.  With the regaining of that gift though, I find more and more moments clouded by thoughts of the two children whose lives were lost all those years ago, and I suppose if I had to lay claim to missing anything more than another it would be my babies, my children, Jasna and Marko.

Jasna and Marko...it's been fourteen years since they were ripped from my life, and while not a day goes by that they don't find their way into my thoughts, knowing that I am to be a father, a tata, once more, it makes me miss them all the more.

What I wouldn't give to have my son and daughter here with me now, to have the chance to touch them, to hold them, to love them, to give them the chance to be the big sister and brother they were never allowed the chance to be. 

I find myself more and more lately comparing the moments I'm feeling now with Abby to those I shared with Danijela in regard to Jasna and Marko, and I think it frightens me.  Can I be to this child the type of father I was to my first children?  Can I love this one with the level of completeness that I felt toward the two who were taken from me? 

I know part of my fear is self preservation. That deep inside I worry that if I love this child as much as I loved my first two and something were to happen, and then I stop myself and wonder how could I not.

The thoughts of them come without warning, triggered by a word, an action, a smell, and in those moments the pain of missing them can be as fresh as if they had only just been taken.

Fourteen years, a lifetime of changes.  Jasna, my little girl, she would be a woman now, a year older now then her mother was on the day she gave birth to her.  Marko, my baby boy, locked forever in my memory with the staggered gait of a chubby toddler just learning to walk, would himself be the age his mother was when we first met.

It's so hard, and even after so long, and knowing I miss them so much, I know too that I always will.  I think I'm learning to accept that not a moment will pass that I won't catch something in my new child that will trigger a memory to one of them, a look, an action, a sound.  I know I wouldn't be the father I will be to this child without the experiences they gave tome and maybe that's what makes all of the rest of this okay, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.