For Joseph on your 16th Birthday….

Joseph,

This year I’m writing your birthday letter on the long drive down to France, painfully aware of the missing face in the back seat of the car or wondering if perhaps this year you would have chose to stay at home with Lewis and get up to all kinds of mischief together. I’d give anything to be coming home to the horror of the state of my kitchen, the wheelie bin over flowing with empty take-away boxes and beer cans, to the look of guilt on both of your faces when I ask what you’ve been up to in my absence. Instead I find myself swallowing a lump in my throat every time I glance in the rear view mirror, looking at the brother and sisters you never got to meet, wondering how we survived even one year without you, let alone sixteen.

This year would have been a huge one for you Joseph – leaving school, sitting your GCSE’s, your prom night, results day and a whole Summer of fun ahead of you before you figure out what to do next. There are so many moments we have missed over the last sixteen years but in some ways these milestones have hit the hardest and I can’t even put into words how desperately sad I feel to know that with every passing year, there is simply more of you to miss. The pain of missing your very first day at school has been every bit as heartbreaking as missing your last and it’s yet again a devastating reminder that this will be the case for always.

And whilst days like your birthday physically pain me with grief, and whilst there are moments I feel completely incensed with rage that you aren’t here, it’s also a time to remember just how far I have come in the last sixteen years. Although it may feel as though my grief is still all-consuming, and indeed there are moments when I’m right back in that hospital bed clutching a baby I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to, so much has changed since that day.

Sometimes I look at the handful of photos we shared together and I barely even recognise that 26 year old girl looking back at me, to remember how even at her lowest ebb, holding a baby she would not take home, she still smiled for the camera knowing that one day that memory would be all she had to look back on. I struggle to associate with that young couple who had wanted nothing more than to raise their two boys and create the family they always wanted; those two lost souls determined to grow stronger through their loss with no idea it would completely break them the following year.

And yet here I am, sixteen years later, still waking up each day, still putting one foot in front of the other, still doing everything I can to make sure that not only am I surviving, but I am living my life to the fullest for the two of us. And I guess that’s how I cope with grief these days, to throw myself into making memories, to seizing the moments, to being the very best version of myself I can possibly be to make you proud. And whether I’m writing your name in the sand dunes of the Sahara or seeking out your star on the clearest night sky, you are always with me at every step, reminding me with every single heartbeat that I am stronger than I ever thought possible and somehow, inexplicably, I know you are never far away.

And how could you be when you are so loved by your siblings, by the big brother who has longed for you for every second of these sixteen years, and the little sisters and brother who have never known a life without you a part of it. They talk about you every single day Joseph, whether it’s to poignantly tell me how much they long for you at bedtime or to use you to sway the girl-boy family ratio, they say your name so freely and without sadness that it both warms my heart and breaks it at the same time.

I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the last sixteen years is that your story didn’t end the day we said goodbye. Although what happened was the most tragic of plot twists and although I would give anything to re-write the lines, over time we found the strength to turn the page, to start a new chapter and, although it may not have been the story we were hoping for, I will spend the rest of my days making sure it’s the happy ever after you deserved.

In the words of a song from one of Lewis’s favourite artists, and perhaps he would have been yours too –

And I will close the door, but I will open up my heart
And everyone I love will know exactly who you are
‘Cause this is not goodbye, it is just ’til we meet again
So much has changed since you’ve been away

Happy 16th Birthday Joseph, we love and miss you all the stars in the sky.

Mum

xxxxx