Dear Thi Not many days go past before I am writing to you again. The emotional pit stops seem to be reappearing quite rapidly at the moment. Xav has spent the last two days in a childhood struggle. He has begun asking questions again about cancer and rhetorical questions relating to what I would prefer with regards to you children? “ Mummy would you rather have one of us with cancer and not know the outcome or have Thi back with cancer and live?” He still cannot accept that you couldn’t live with cancer. He obviously doesn’t see the distress you had from having no hair or the disappointment when you couldn’t play football like you used too because the tumour was stopping your body from working properly. He is trying to work it all out again. Last night he sat on the floor after our usual bath and book and said "I have a strange feeling" "do you darling" I replied. " Yes" he said as he broke into tears and sobbed " I think I just miss Thisy." I picked him up and he confessed to having had a moment today when he thought he was going to have to go to his bag to look at his picture of you. Both Jos and Xav still carry a picture of you in their school bags. In fact Jos has an album which weighs more than his books! It's their safety net. Whenever they are low and sad they visit their pictures and remember all that was good. Times together and times so close. I feel for the boys, a pain I simply can't take away from them. Recently I have had a little contact with your friends. I look at them and see their teenage spotty skin and listen to their cracking voices desperately trying to break and become male. I stand next to them seeing their height. All I can do is imagine. Imagine what you would be like now. It's a huge transition this year and I am missing not being able to giggle at the voice breaks and joke with you in an even more mature way. I wouldn't even mind if all you would do is grunt at me, in fact right now I would welcome it. However, selfishly I would only want all this with my well and healthy Thi, in a normal world, where you are expected to reach adulthood and experience the joys and love of parenthood. I will never forget my darling when I told you your life could be shortened. This was the beginning of having to tell you that you would die. I promise you I only ever told you something if I knew the exact outcome. At this point we were going to try the trial drug and although in my gut I knew this was doing nothing it was a plan. Therefore, it wasn’t an end….yet. You looked at me so so scared. Your eyes burrowing into mine and said " but all I want is a family, a car, a house and children" helpless in my response. I held you and we cried together. Helpless and unable to answer the only question that meant the world to you. How long? For once the boys, all of them, wanted to go to the grave to spend some time with you. We have planned a planting exposition and I pray this is the beginning of the boys feeling at home with visiting the grave. Jos has struggled up until now so our visits have been infrequent. Not for any other reason than to allow the boys time to come to terms with their own feelings. Visiting the grave was wonderful, we all planted, talked, loved and cried. We discussed our plans for your headstone and the boys were ‘well pleased’ as they would say. I never thought it would take so long to organise. It is an emotional rollercoaster and a mission indeed. And so the mayhem of the school run and normality resumes. It truly is a case of If you stop still you are liable to trip, stumble or even fall. I've always been a person on the go never stopping still for long and running from one thing to the next. When you were a baby there was always something in the diary for us to do. I wonder if this fast way of living being my normal lifestyle was my preparation. Preparing me for the speed I was going to have to encounter to save me from the falls? Who would have thought that a flash anti bacterial wipe would be a trigger? As I wiped out your brothers lunchbox the smell of anti bacterial wipes threw me into missing you. After a very short breakdown I realised for the first time yet, that I was missing you from your babyhood. Not being ill or in pain or in remission or even as far as I have gone to date diagnosis. You were my baby again. I could smell you and see you in your rocker smiling at me. You were the most content and happy little boy. Not always brave but despite that you still pushed through the things that scared you. I think a lot of parents pine for that babyhood again at some point. But right now I would hold you again in the crook of my neck and as I did 13 years ago and repeat the words I used to say “cherish this moment because it won't last forever.” Little did I know how short my forever was going to be. I love you darling. I think I'm ok and then I face it I'm not. We are never going to be anything but broken. The only change is how much damage is there and how much has been glued back together? With the potential of it possibly only to break again or on a good run for it to be mended a little further? I realise I have gone to bed thinking about looking after you in Chase, I wake up and I am looking at you as a baby and then I look at a picture of you in a moment of your life that I struggle to recall. And then I am broken again, the little piece that was glued together has suddenly collapsed and I am completely broken without you. We all are and always will be. But the broken state will continue to be partially glued back together again in order to survive the journey to the summit, our summit. So today my darling, I am working on being glued back together again and my girls and I are off to Guildford to gather raffle prizes for your event. Partially glued back together and held up again, yet never completely repaired until the day I reach the summit to be with you. I love you with all my heart Thisy, even though it may be broken it will never stop loving you. Mummy x