For Joseph on your 14th birthday

Joseph,

Well here we are again, another year, another birthday, another reminder of all we have lost over fourteen long years. Fourteen. Just saying that out loud causes my breath to catch in my chest, wondering how fourteen years have passed since we said our first hello’s and our last goodbyes but at the same time, wondering how it is only fourteen years since that moment when our lives changed forever. My beautiful, precious boy, I have never missed you more than I do right here in this moment.

July is always going to be a tough month for me, juggling the weight of my grief at losing you with those joyous memories of meeting you for the first time. My heart bursts with the memories of your little hand in mine, those rosebud lips and that shock of black hair, marvelling at your long feet, the beautiful slope of your nose, the silky softness of your cheek against mine. And at the same time it aches with the thought of that final goodbye, the last moments I held you in my arms, the gut wrenching sound of the door closing behind us, and the physical pain of going home without you.

In some ways I’ve found this year harder than ever during four months of lockdown when that gaping hole you left behind has been more noticeable than ever. Far too many times I have found myself looking at Lewis, reeling from the premature ending of his school days, separated from his friends, just sitting in his room day in and day out, and wondering how different our lives would have been had you been there as a brother, as a friend. I’ve found myself imagining your conversations and your bike rides, your competitive runs and your FIFA tournaments; I’ve found myself looking at Lewis as he watches Eva, Megan and Harry together knowing without a shadow of a doubt that he is imagining it too. He has missed you his whole life Joseph, I’m sure he always will.

And for Eva, Megan and Harry, growing older by the day, there are questions I no longer have the answers to – why you couldn’t stay, why you live in the sky, why you never come down and see us? It’s hard, I won’t lie, especially at their age when I try so hard to protect them from the truth – that babies don’t always survive and hearts can be broken. But gosh do they love you, with a fierce devotion I know they will carry throughout their lives, and your name is spoken daily in the hope you will hear it in the whispers of the wind, on the slope of every rainbow, the brightest of days or the darkest of skies.

And so I guess it would be very easy to sit here today and focus on the gaping hole you left behind, to feel angry and bitter and question why? Even after all of these years. I guess it would be easy to think of this day, 14 long years ago, and remember it as a time when our life was turned upside down and changed for the worse. And maybe for a long time I believed that it did, maybe it was easier to drown in my sadness and my anger and allow it to encompass every aspect of my life, to allow it to tear apart a marriage, to detract from every happiness, every laugh, every smile, every hope for the future. Maybe for far too long I saw my life as “before” and “after”, a time when my heart was whole versus a time when those shattered fragments refused to heal, a time when I was so consumed with grief that I was merely existing instead of living.

And yet today, on your 14th birthday, I know that just isn’t true and I want you to know that you coming into our lives was the best thing that ever happened to me, changing my life in so many ways and each of them for the better. You are the reason I know what true love is, how short life is, the importance of seizing every moment and living without regret. You are the reason I say yes more often than I say no, the reason I laugh harder, feel things deeper and love with every ounce of me. You are the reason I challenge myself often, the reason I seek out the positives and suck up the negatives, the reason I worked hard to achieve our dreams, to build our family, to live our life for the two of us, and for the seven of us.

And whilst I’m not sure I will ever find the words to thank you for changing our lives the way you did, just know that because of you, everything is different. Because despite everything, the only thing I’d ever change about my life was that on this day, fourteen long years ago, we had got to keep you for always.

Happy 14th Birthday Joseph, you are loved and missed beyond measure.

Love you all the stars in the sky,

Mum

xxxx