Dear Charlie, It’s been a while since Mummy blogged. Please don’t think Mummy has forgotten you, or doesn’t miss you every day. We all love you so much and miss you each day. This year you will be 6. I wonder what you would be getting up to by now. Football with Harry, gaming with Lottie and I’m sure you would love Molly and Emmie. It’s strange to think if you were here with us on earth, if we would have Molly and Emmie? And strange to hear Molly talk about you, when she finds a feather, when we visit you, when she is drawing you in our family pictures. Harry and Lottie have true memories, they heard you, they saw you, they held you. Molly has our memories, and is already building a picture of you, what sort of a little boy you would be. It’s lovely to see and hear, but so bittersweet that she didn’t meet her big brother. And it will be the same with Emmie.
The last few days have been emotional. Desperate to come up to your grave, to spend that time with you, but I find the winter months too hard, the ground too soft and all I am consumed with is the desire to dig you up. You are just a few feet away. people say “don’t be so stupid, it wouldn’t be the same little boy down there, time has happened, changes happen etc etc”, but none of that will change the urge I have, the desire I have to hold you, to see you again. Of course I know changes have made, I know how many years it takes for a body to break down, I have researched it many many times. Unless people have walked these shoes of giving birth to a child, had their child die in their arms, and then buried that child, they will never never understand.
This weekend has shown me how one minute you can be ‘fine’, and just like that something can trigger emotion. A box, a simple box was all it took for me to be crying. But in that box were things connected to you, paperwork relating to you, my cardigan and daddy’s jumper. To some such tiny unimportant things, but to me, a mum who lost all opportunity to parent you, who had no choice over a post mortem, whose baby was taken away and became a coroners case, who had to go through an inquest and hear the mistakes made. To me they are massive. I thought I was in a good place. A place where I still miss you, where i cannot wait for the day I die to be with you again. But where I can live with myself on earth to be with your siblings and daddy. But I think this weekend has taught me, I will always miss you, I will always regret every single missed opportunity from going to hospital on the Friday, to your birth and the amazing 29 hours we had you, to every single thing after we lost you. I think I will always be consumed with guilt, guilt I couldn’t keep you safe, guilt I didn’t do more, say more, guilt I survived, guilt over every single thing. I think that is a feeling that I can never get over, nothing will ever make it right. I can never put on paper what you mean to me, I don’t think I can even describe the pain I carry every single day. But I dream you are happy, that you are loved very much by my grandad, that he is keeping you safe and loved until I can be there. He was a fantastic grandad, simply the best, so who else to care for you when I can’t.
And so we are a few short months away from your 6th birthday, so time to start thinking about how we will celebrate and remember you. Hopefully covid restrictions will allow us to be with all your siblings this year. Remember even if mummy hasn’t come to your grave as much I usually do, every single day I look over to the glebe from my bedroom window. You are always in my thoughts. I may get distracted at times by the madness that is your siblings, but I will never stop loving and missing you. Hopefully at some point I can be at peace with the overwhelming sense of guilt and loss. But if I can’t get any peace from feeling like it, maybe that is just what is meant to be. But for now just remember I love you so very much.
Love you always
Mummy xxxxx