Happy Birthday, or is it?

And so the week I have such a love/hate relationship with has commenced once again.

It is the week that 9 years ago, our 8th son was born, but also died.

It is the week, that nine years on is still etched in my mind, every second of every day of my son's life.

For that I am both glad and sad.

Everyone who has lost a baby, knows the anticipation of the week is often far worse than the days.

I think after nine years, we are so very busy I don't have the anticipation anymore, but it tends to hit me like a brick the night before his birthday and the feelings linger on until after he was cremated.

When your baby dies, that is not it, there is no closure. You live on in a world where they should have been.

Every family photo, is not a complete representation of your family, because your child is missing, every family event caries with it a twinge of sadness because there is someone not present there to make it complete. I felt this acutely in June at Abie's wedding where my other son's were ushers, Joshua should have been standing there as well.

My brain is often in battle.The fight is to eradicate the 'should have, could have, would haves', and replace them with less negative terminology. Sometimes it works, and sometimes I fall into the patterns again, often at times where I feel he needed to be there, the celebrations and events times.

So how do you celebrate a birthday without the birthday boy? It is a hard one.

We celebrate because we want to remember him and the little life he had, because he will always be a part of our family, no matter what anyone else says, and because it is one of the very few little gestures we can still do for him.

Is it happy?

Not really.

But it is meaningful and the little ones love it each year.

How do you explain to a 6 year old where her brother is, what he was like and why he died? 

I fight against the feelings that no 6 year old should really have to have this conversation vs feelings that she needs to know she had a brother that everyone else can remember.

 Caleb looks very like Joshua. I am grateful for this. I can, in some small way see perhaps a little of the boy he would have grown into. Caleb is not Joshua, he is himself, an adorable, much loved little boy who shares, as his middle name , his big brothers.

And so each year we buy balloons, from the same shop, they have long since stopped asking why we buy so many once a year. We go to the beach and we release them, we light the same scented candles around the house that we had when we brought Joshua home with us for a few days before his final goodbyes and we have a birthday cake. We but new decorations for his stone and garden and make him cards and little gifts.

This is how we cope with loosing our baby.

It is not the way others cope, but everyone is entitled to do it their way.

The grief process has no wrongs nor rights, and no one has the authority to dictate what we should or should not do, especially those who have (fortunately) not walked our path.

Some one once said we belong to a club, the only club no one wants to join. The dead baby club.

Membership is automatic, unavoidable, sudden, shocking, painful, all consuming, and harsh. That only goes a little to describing it. Open heart surgery without the anaesthetic perhaps goes a small way to describing the absolute physical pain you feel.

So you see, this birthday brings with it the whole spectrum of feelings once again. You want to remember yet you don't want all those emotions brought back.

A birthday, thankfully unlike all the others.

Happy Birthday sweetheart!

In Loving Memory of Joshua

~In Loving Memory of Joshua~

As I gaze down at your beautiful face, I see you are no longer there,
Someday when I am old
and someone asks me if I am looking forward to heaven,

I’ll say: “I’m ready to meet Jesus
but there’s someone else I want to see too.”

 I’ll say: “It’s been thirty or forty years since I’ve seen him
 and the time we spent together was all too brief
 -a few short days, that's all,
 and he was so delicate.
 He spent most of that time trying to breathe.
 I never had the chance to really find out
 who he was or what he was like,
 what he could have done,
 who he could have been.

 “But he was my child
 -he will never offend me, hurt me, upset me,
 he will never know suffering or pain,
 the days of his life were numbered
 and each one was filled with endless love

My joy!
Flesh of my flesh, my own,
a gift of eternal innocence
and I love him
with limitless love.

“My other children grew up and grew older with me
but this one -the one I’m longing to see
stayed the same through the years
his face fixed in my memory
like a faded snapshot,
its corners worn,
from too much handling.”

Through the years,
the good and bad times,
I’ve dreamt of that distant reunion
and imagined the moment
I could look him in the eyes and say:
“Darling, your mother’s missed you so very much,
but now we’ll never be apart again.”

 

Carole Gift Page

With additions by Fiona Beavan

The hedgehog

Luke was on the paper round last night.

As he came to the roundabout he saw a family of hedgehogs crossing the road. 

Whoosh a car came and squashed the first one, then another car came and the second one succumbed to the wheels, so what does my son do, with no regard to his safety, runs into the road and waves his arms about to stop the third car running over the baby hedgehog.

It was a police car!

Thankfully the officers inside took kindly to my son flying into the road.

So he came home with the baby hedgehog in his arms.

Not a fan of animals, I did warm to the poor little thing.

The R.S.P.C. helpline was phoned and on the advice of them we gave him some water and warmed him up. The children named him 'Harry' and made him a little house.

Given hedgehogs are flee ridden, I had to persuade them to finally say their goodbyes to Harry and place him outside, under the wooden wendy house where he would be a little protected.

The children all ran out in the garden this morning, but Harry was gone, he was still absent when they came home from school, and when Susie came home from work, armed with a cardboard box for his home.

So the cardboard box is there, filled with newspaper, water and food, waiting for Harry to re appear.

I wonder if he will?

The Dentist and the Maternity appointment

A somewhat surreal experience happened today.
I walked into the local hospital, and PAST all the ladies waiting to see the consultant as part of their maternity check ups.
I didn't sign in, not join the usual hour long wait.
I didn't have a bump, bring a urine sample or endless extra pages of notes or compare my 'bump' to everyone else's.
Even the receptionists looked shocked.
They know me well!
Instead I walked past with Bella, and down the stairs to her Orthodontic appointment instead.
Weird!
Half of me wanted to go upstairs and say 'hello' to all the familiar midwives, nurses and my wonderfully patient consultant. But it was heaving, so I didn't.
Instead I watched paste be mixed, impressions be made, and talked after brace care.
We walked out, my beautiful 16 year old and me, not chatting excitedly about the forthcoming baby, but rather about the much longed for , forthcoming brace removal!
Was I upset about this shift?
Surprisingly no.
My life is shifting and changing.
The bulk of my large family will, in a few years all be adults.
I still have my little ones for quite a while, and I am beginning to embrace these changes.
Perhaps today was a 'first' of many more to come?

The Fight

It was Mair’s second day at her new school.

She wanted to play with the boys! They don’t hold much fear for her, given all her older siblings. She could keep up well with them, in fact she said they were quite cross how fast she could run.

The play then got boisterous, or so she related back to me.

‘They started to scratch me and pull my hair and then some of them punched me.’

‘Oh my goodness Mair, did you report them to the teacher?’ I said in horror.

‘Well I punched them back first, Mum and then I did!”.

‘Oh what did they say? Did you get into trouble?”.

‘Well Mum’, Mair said with her hands on her hips. ’They had to stand on the red line.’

‘What about you?’ I said.

‘She only told me off, cause I couldn’t punch that hard’.

So, what to say to my feisty indignant 6 year old?

25 years ago, when I first started on the journey of motherhood, I advocated non violence, and told my first child to turn the other cheek.

She did, until the night I was bathing her and I distinctly saw a full set of teeth marks in her arm.

When interrogated she told me Jodie’s teeth had somehow found their way there. On closer questioning it transpired Jodie had been systematically bullying her for a while.

So I changed tactic. The teacher just dismissed the incidents so intervention was called for and Abigail was told in no uncertain terms, whilst we did not agree with fighting, the next time this child came near her, to give her one hell of a kick with her shoes (Dr Martins!).

She did.

Jodie never went near her again!

The teacher called me in and was fairy disgusted that I advocated it, and punished Abigail. We accepted the punishment as schools cannot be seen to be promoting this, however secretly we discussed the incident and agreed that sometimes the end justified the means.

Having watched another of our children undergo years of bullying before they stood up for themselves I am afraid my views have changed.

I digress.

I congratulated Mair for sticking up for herself and not letting them just walk over her. I then explained that it was wrong to hit people but if she was doing it too defend herself then we felt this was okay. I tried to explain that if she chose to hit back, then unfortunately the school would punish her, so she would have to think carefully about her actions.

It is so hard to watch your child be victimised by another child, or group of children. It is equally hard to watch pupils endure this low level of violence as well. I am glad my children can stick up for themselves. It is a hard line to sometimes know what to say.

I must admit that I did smile at the image of my tiny little knobbly kneed girl give these boys a punch!

The bennefits of free state education !

A good few years ago now!

And so another school year commences.

The mad rush is almost over (apart from the last min trek 60 miles to Cheadle Hulme for Bella's new uniform tomorrow)!

Pencil cases have been bought and filled, shoes are shiny and new and lunchboxes are packed.

Another year begins.

A different year.

Susie has now left school and is at work.

Luke and Bella, having successfully passed their G.C.S.E's enter the 6 th form in two completely different schools, 40 miles apart!

Martha starts her G.C.S.E courses, and Jono starts high school!

Mair's wonderful village school has sadly closed it's doors for the last time, so she moves too a much bigger school, where her eldest sister starts her first year of teaching! Both newbies,18 years apart!

Ella and Mair, for the first time ever are split up, as Ella is still on the very long waiting list for the school Mair has been fortunate enough to get a place. They may well be reunited this year.

My babies are going to be prepared to have a day at the childminder.

Only a day.

My other work, I will do around them, as I want to spend as much time as I can with them.

The school year is always bitter sweet.

As teachers, both Simon and I have to prepare for the mad rush of work after so long a break (I am not complaining).

I always feel sad letting them go back to school, and there is a part of me that wished they could stay at home.

That is until, in the holidays I try to get them to settle to any work, whatsoever!

They have missed their friends and their routines, and so have we!

So many times, of late, I have seen our education system slated by, mainly the press, but also by others who really have very little real idea of what they are talking about.

As a teacher for (blush) over 25 years now, these complaints wear a bit thin on me, my husband, now my eldest daughter, along with most of my colleagues.

I trained long and hard to teach. It was bloody hard work, as anyone who has been on teaching practise can verify!

Over the years I have been on endless courses and read endless books to both update my qualifications and add to my expertise and my experience.

I value the relationships I work so hard to develop, and given so many of my past students have found me on face book, I reckon I must have done a pretty good job.

Contrarily to what some people think, teachers care greatly about the pupils in their care.We take time to develop relationships with them, and get to know them, we worry about them and we look after them, knowing how precious they are. I find it quite offensive when we are criticised. I am so grateful to the teachers who in turn have looked after and cared for my own children and brought out talents and abilities that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Our education is free.

Granted many children do not appreciate this fact.

My daughter Susie worked in a Ugandan orphanage for two summers when she was just 16 and 17. For her it was an eye opener that the children who are not sponsored to go to school, simply did not receive an education and were desperate for one.

Whatever the issues and the problems that have arisen over the years in Education, very little of this can be apportioned to teachers! A lot, I feel is the governments rather too embracing policies of accepting all. If we had continued to be firmer, I think we would not see some of the low levels of behaviour displayed in classrooms today.

I am not advocating beatings but I must admit, when I was in year 7 and the Deputy Head patrolled the corridors with her kane and swooped into any disruptive classroom, bodily picked up the offending pupil and gave them a quick whack, our school had very few behaviour issues. The year later, corporal punishment of pupils was banned and disruption commenced.

Saying this, my children have benefited from state education. They have been part of clubs and societies, they have been in shows and productions, been on camps and trips, developed life long friendships and have met and been taught by some incredible teachers who have pushed them in ways we could not thought of not imagined.

They have learnt to accept others views in debates and discussions, learnt first hand about others beliefs and practises and had their minds expanded and opened along the way.

So next time you want to have a gripe about us, think of the hours we put it (we don't knock off at 3pm), the time we take to carefully prepare work (at a variety of levels) and how we are always looking to find interesting ways to impart lessons to the students in our care.Students are not just shoved through a grade or level like a cattle market, and individual needs are carefully considered and planned for.

I for one, despite my own gripes and reservations at times, am glad my children return tomorrow, to their new schools, old schools, friends and peers, teachers and all the wealth our education system offers.

Lets make the most of what we have!

 

 



Stocktaking

During the summer I have been taking stock.
It is easy to just drift in and out of each year, overwhelmed with the business of each month and never really taking the time to stop and think.
I have increasingly found over the years I have several projects I would love to complete, yet the buisness of work, limits their progress.
Finally I have decided this year I intend to pursue at least a few of these.
Watch this space!
Liberating yet nerve wracking at the same time.