Remembering Joshua

Every year the local hospital holds a memorial service in the local church to remember all the babies lost that year and other years. Candles are lit, songs sung, tears cried and babies names read out and honoured.
We go , not only, as one of the few things we can do for Joshua, but also, as part of the charity to hand out our wrist bands and to meet and greet the many parents who have received our boxes that year.
As the years pass, we see the same people, bonded together in the club no one wants to belong to ' the dead baby club'. Its not a club you choose to be part of, believe me, sadly though we are, as are the many other hundreds of people who attended yesterday.
The hospital and community midwifes are fantastic and become like old friends (our community midwife actually is now) and marvel at how much all the children have grown and compare stories about who delivered who.
I always have mixed feeling about going. No matter how much you want to do this for your child, theres also the part of you that wants to bury your head in the sand and not have yet more wounds opened, or make yourself even more vulnerable than you already feel.
I am always glad I get over this and go. We come home with a little card with Joshua's name, that is dated and carefully placed with all his other cards in his memory box, an order of service and carnations that are each year dried. We also come away with candles.Thankfully now the children are getting older this part of the service is not as nerve wracking as a few years ago where we had five or six small children with flames!
Remembering Joshua, especially this week, in the run up to Abie's wedding has been tough. However I am glad we had a little time just for him, admist all the noise, bustle and haste of the forthcoming week.