For Joseph on your 15th birthday….

Joseph,

As I sit here writing this to you on the eve of your 15th birthday, basking in the warmth of a balmy summers evening in Wales, your brother and sisters running wild in a way which would make a teenage you roll your eyes in annoyance, I find myself wondering, for the millionth time, what life would be like had you been here.

At twenty six years old I thought I had it all – married to my teenage sweetheart, a two year old son, just destined to be a big brother, and you, tucked away safely in my belly with a lifetime of promises ahead. And yet fifteen years ago on this very day, you were already gone. The moment passing by completely unnoticed in a flurry of mundane chores due to nesting, enjoying lunch in the sunshine, hanging babygro’s on the line, reading Lewis a story, and no doubt watching an episode of Big Brother before bed. I still fail to comprehend how you could be here one minute and gone the next and I’m not sure I will ever forgive myself for failing to notice until the following morning when the hushed whispers in a crowded hospital room turned our whole world upside down forever.

It’s difficult to put into words but, in later conversations with your Dad, during those 3am conversations where we said out loud our deepest thoughts, we both confessed that in some way we had known you would never make it home. It feels strange to write that down, so confused as to how we still planned out a whole lifetime for you, filled your wardrobe, chose your pram, mapped out all of our hopes and dreams as a family of four, whilst harbouring such deep rooted fears that they would never come to fruition. It still blows my mind that at the very point the midwife had placed her hand on my leg and uttered the words, “I’m so sorry he has died”,  a little voice at the back of my mind had whispered, you already knew. I’m still not sure I will ever forgive myself for failing to act on that before it was too late.

The last year of lockdown has been hard, and I’m sure you would have hated it every bit as much as your big brother did, but for me it has simply amplified your absence. For every family moment we’ve shared, every sunny day in the garden, every rainy day watching a film, every monotonous walk – a route we could walk with our eyes closed – I’ve been so painfully aware that you aren’t here. And that’s been so hard, not just for me but for all of us.

We talk about you so much Joseph, perhaps even more so now than we ever did, your name falling so easily from the lips of your siblings, including you in absolutely everything we do. Whilst Lewis misses you with the most heartbreaking intensity, Eva, Megan and Harry are understandably curious, filled with questions about why you couldn’t stay, seeking out the magic in a big brother who “lives in the sky”. Just this evening Harry told me that perhaps you would get a holiday for your birthday, a visit to another planet up in space, or a mobile phone so you could ring us up to say hello. “What would you say to him if you could?” I had asked, and without a moments hesitation he replied, “I’d say I love you and I miss you infinity.” And they do. 

Because as much as they have all grown up with unquestionable acceptance that you simply couldn’t stay, it’s those late night conversations which still break my heart in two, the bedtime cuddles when, completely out of nowhere, they will tell me “I wish Joseph was here.” It’s the moments by your graveside when Lewis’s eyes fill with tears, when I feel that crushing weight of grief in my chest that all five of you will never be together in the way that I had planned. And perhaps that’s how our lives will be forever, a never ending seesaw of joy and sadness, an eternal cycle of both bitter and sweet; perhaps that is simply the nature of grief and one we must accept no matter how many years pass us by.

I’m so sad you’re not here today Joseph, that I’ll never get to know the young man you should have become, to know whether you would still be a Joseph or a Joe, a Joey or something else entirely, perhaps a nickname given by your mates with a slap on the back on the walk to school. I’m so sad I won’t ever know what it’s like to wave two of you off to your dads each week, to have you and Lewis call shotgun when I pick you back up, to juggle two football matches every Sunday instead of just one. I’m so sad you never got the chance to meet your sisters, to have them wind you up in the same way they do to Lewis, or have Harry sneak into your room and beg for a game on your XBox, looking at you with complete admiration as he watches you play. I’m sad for so many reasons, far too many to ever put down on paper, but mostly I’m just sad for the fifteen year old boy I’ll never know.

There’s a quote I love which says, “For the rest of my life I will search for moments full of you” and so that is what we do. It’s all that we can do. Over the last twelve months we have found you in all the best places – in the rolling hills of Tuscany, the amber glow of a Cretan sunrise, the brightest of rainbows on the darkest of days, the flowers that bloom on our daily walk and the laughter of your siblings as it carries on the wind.

We’ve found you in the crashing waves on the Devon coast line, in the birdsong outside our tent in Wales, the silence of the sunset as we sit together arm in arm, the stars in the sky though the lens of a telescope. And in three months time when I take on the challenge to walk 100km across the Sahara desert I know you will be with me every single step of the way, in every sand dune, every star above, every beat of my heart as I carry you with me. Every moment is so full of you Joseph, so full of love and gratitude and hope, so full of a desperate need to make the days count, to make the moments matter, to know that for every memory we make as a family of six it is always for us as a seven.

So Happy 15th Birthday my beautiful boy. You are loved and missed all the stars in the sky.

We’ll see you at sunset.

Mum xxxxxx