These are the things that I know

That without love, there is no grief.  Grief is acute and painful love which has no physical channel.   I always find myself overcome at watching human emotion - love and family predominantly.  If you ever want to see the essence of what it is to be human, go and sit at an airport and watch people be reunited.  I think that may have been the end credits of the film "Love Actually" but it's true - I've done it. Several years ago I went to collect some friends from Gatwick airport and I sat quietly for a few hours watching people.  I was moved to tears by some of the reunions.  That is what it is to be human.  To belong, to love, to feel, to need and to appreciate.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, perhaps with the exception of warring ex partners.  Grief is the emotion of extreme physical absence of one that is loved.   With Freddie I was in love; without him I am painfully and wildly in love.

What have I learnt about myself since January?   That my love is powerful... That life is fleeting.... That life isn't about happy ever afters, wads of cash or a pimp car (I can't deny I would turn any of these down...) because when one or all of those disappear - life still exists and you have to find new meaning.  I've never believed in happy ever afters as such - I'm far too much of a pessimist for that, but I did think my darkest days were behind me, I've learnt that we walk into darkness - the unknown, so try and live for the light in the here and now.  Make plans, have dreams, be excited but take stock every day of what is good right now.  I go back to something my wonderful friend taught me about listing even the smallest pleasures day by day.
Above all else love.  Just love. Love your friends, your family, love as much as you can because it's all we can do in the end.

Diluted

My blog has been getting increasingly dark as this week has progressed.  It seemed to start out in the early days as determination to not be defined by this awful tragedy and has now become everything defined by tragedy.   Inevitable I suppose.   I can't blame myself for naivety and shock at the start.   Just like being a parent for the first time,  with all these hopes and dreams and ideas,  you gradually unpick it all to find out what the real you is as a parent.   In fact I'd say this is true of any child you bear.  I had so many ideas of what kind of parent I'd be to Matilda and as time has passed,  I'm not quite the parent I thought I'd be - not worse,  or better,  just different.   The same applies for being a grieving parent.   I'm not the grieving parent I thought I'd be.  I thought I'd be gutsy and by now would be involved in some kind of bereavement work bringing a positive outcome to Freddie's death.   I'm not doing that,  in fact I'd say the last few weeks may have been some of the worst.   It's OK.   It's really ok to not progress,  in fact progression scares me and there has been a stubborness to my grieving of late.   A refusal to take a positive step because walking ahead has felt like leaving him behind.   I allow myself to waiver,  I allow myself to fail.   I'm still learning to mother him and it's so much harder without him here.

The blackness has temporarily been lifted.   I brought home a kitten yesterday.   I wasn't sure this was the right thing to do AT ALL.  I've been resisting this all week,  I bought kitten things and then didn't go to a viewing.   I sent Simon a heartwrenching email about what a failure I am because I couldn't even make up my mind about a pet; but then I saw a bigger picture.   I saw two children who didn't ask for such horror and desperately want some happiness and distraction.  My rawness and sadness is acceptable to a point because I firmly believe emotion isn't something to hide behind closed doors, however of late it needs diluting.   I began to imagine my kids in the future talking of how, after their little brother died mother was never the same again.  How she shut herself away, how the house became sad and lifeless.  This is perhaps just me being "histrionic", whatever, I felt they deserved some life back.  Tilda has been asking for a pet for a while and the time for them seemed right.  Strangely I found the act of bringing a pet home more of a moral dilemma than whether to have another child.   Up until the kitty was placed in her carrier I was wanting to run and hide.  Perhaps somewhere in my psyche I felt I was trying to substitute and knew that it wasn't possible, but I also felt this guilt at separating her from her mama.  I'm either a psychologist's dream or worst nightmare at present.

 As it turns out it's quite fun having a little playful ball of fluff.   Therapeutic if you will.  I still sit here worrying that I'm sadly trying to quench the insatiable thirst of loss - and by next week I'll have lost interest because it hasn't fixed the hole in my heart.  Then I remember it's not all about me,  my children have a new lease of life and new excitement and smiles.  And they deserve it, because life is just as much theirs as it is mine and Freddie's.