Dear Thisy This letter is going to be for now a very emotional one. Today my walls came crashing down. Maybe it was the brick wall I needed, as it has been a while since I truly sobbed. Oh my darling where do I begin. My new term at school had started with such strength and stamina. I was feeling so strong in comparison to the first days of starting back after you died. We had a training session today with a community nurse. It is strange how life leads you along the path. Lead with a purpose? Although I am not sure what that purpose is yet. The nurse was signing in and I bent down to her to ask a question. She looked up and our eyes locked. It was as if both of us had been slapped in the face. We stumbled on incoherent words, not really knowing how we felt. Helpless? It was one of your lovely nurses from Chase. We held each other and wept. The weeping couldn't stop. Both rendered unable to continue. We talked a little and I said a few words to help our situation but I really don’t think I helped at all. I so want her to know the truth of the matter. The emotion and the way we spoke together has nothing to do with both our professionalism. I think it goes way beyond that and our emotion overrides everything. It isn’t about who should have the 'best' advice. The long and the short of it is quite simply the fact that I am older by some 18 years. Older in the tooth one may say. This seems quite cryptic darling but I know you know what I am saying. We hugged and half of our souls needed to take flight and the other half needed to stay and fight. Sadly, the flight won and she left. Both rendered distressed and hurt. My day soldiered on broken yet not making a complete break until I came home to explain to Granny what had happened. I am at a loss. It's hard to help everyone and physically impossible yet my work and heart do not feel complete with out feeling like I can sort it. I know I have to let go and I will but it will take time. On looking at the album I made about our experience at Chase, I collapsed. I touched and stroked your pictures, the close up pictures of you lips, your eye, your ear, feet and hands. As painful and as raw as that broken feeling is I am thankful that I took those pictures. At the time I didn't know why I was taking them. Now I know because the reality is I do have moments when I forget you. I do have to accept the reality that I am moving away as the years pass from you and the harsh and incredibly painful feeling inside that I will have many more years ahead of me before we are together again. The guilt of feeling like I have forgotten you is unbearable and jolts my insides like a thunderbolt going through me. Deep down I know I’m not forgetting you and I believe that is the whole reason for the falls to stop the forgetting. I liken it to how I carry on carrying you through our life. There are times when I am carrying you on my back and I have little emotion to share, which is a frightening time for me as that is the ‘forgetting’ hold. Then I carry you on my hip and I am most comfortable then as you are part of everything I do and I have the strongest hold where I can share, be emotive, yet still be strong. Then I can carry you on my front and it is here that I have the hardest hold. The weight is heavy the pain increases and I am rendered unable to carry you, so I fall for a short while. I can then pick you up again and carry you on my hip. Today you are being carried completely on my front and hopefully after writing this you will be on my hip again. The most comfortable hold. After writing this piece of my letter I went into your brothers and kissed each of them with my eyes closed grateful for their smell and touch. Today is my first day to meet and teach my new reception class. Xav was sent home ill yesterday and continued to have a fever in the night and then Jonas began vomiting at 6am. Consequently my priority has to be with the boys. One thing I have noticed since dealing with you and cancer is that I'm not so hung up on the sickness. I used to shake and feel sick myself whenever one of you boys were sick, purely selfish reasons as I am scared about my own sickness. This time around I haven't been so worried, in fact I have been surprisingly calm! I realise this is simply a recognition that nothing, absolutely nothing can be as traumatic or frightening as what you went through. I admire you and I thank you for making me see the light on what really matters. As the term begins I am struggling with Jos and his emotive ways. I am praying it is just a settling in period. Are all year 6's becoming big headed, lippy, dare I say it slightly selfish? I hate it. That's not what I bought my boys up to be like. Firmer boundaries seem to be creating more friction between Jos and daddy and I. If only I could make him speak his mind more often and more openly. I wonder if we are due a meltdown, grieving the pain for not having you next to him, for having his vision of childhood slashed from him, for entering into the years you never had. He must be scared, so scared. I will find a moment a small quiet moment for just him and me to try and talk it through. So, the beginning of term has quite frankly been a tricky start. An emotional roller coaster which seems to have one or two too many loop the loops in it for my liking. Today I took Jos to get some new football boots. It's a strange part of our road that we are travelling now. This is the beginning of the unknown. This time two years ago you were entering into your most challenging and scary moments as you learnt to accept your end. You were completely accepting in honesty and It will be the proudest moment of my life when I sat and we talked for an hour about your pending death, how you accepted it, how I had to answer honestly, how you told me what you wanted to happen. You were and always will be my pride and joy. Now, I am trying to be free of anxiety as our gorgeous Jos enters into the years you never had. I have to trust he will reach 11,12,13.......... After the massive size 8 football boot purchase we visited your grave. Darling Xav wobbled and cried for you as he asked what he would see if we were to dig up the ground. We then proceeded to talk about our emotions. Jos asked why Xav cried a lot and why he cries every now and again. It's so lovely to have such grown up and honest conversations with your brothers. They are amazing. Just watch over your Jos Thisy, he keeps a lot in and only let's it out occasionally. I am concerned that he will be scared both physically and psychologically. I just pray that his method works well for him. I have only one aim in my life and that is to get your beautiful brothers to adulthood without being scared about death or illness and to know that they are loved as much by you Thi now as when you were alive physically. On a more positive note your Aunty Rach has finished all of her treatment, two operations, six rounds of chemo and 34 days of radiation. I know you have been very much in her thoughts and maybe you were showing her the way a little. You both are amazing and I believe and pray she has started showing our children in our whole family that it is possible to get through cancer and live life to the full. In one breath I speak positively and in the next I spill the negative. I suppose that just reiterates the roller coaster we are on. With Xavier still ill after 4 days my stable head drifts into what if this is more than just a childhood germ. He came to bed last night with chest pain unable to rest, to sit, to be comfortable. My stability ceased as I lay with him, just as I lay with you countless hours saying nothing, just stroking you and being there. As I am lying with him I am beginning to relive every minute of our time, the relentless trips to St Peter’s hospital. The enormously scared feeling as we were admitted to the ward and fobbed off with potential reasons for your pain. Six weeks of being messed around in my eyes was six weeks too many. If the correct people had seen us, would we still have you now? I am a strong believer in not living on ‘why?’ and ‘if’ as there is nothing we can positively do with those thoughts. Regardless as I was lying with Xav I was saying what if and then I was planning Xav and my route to hospital. Where we would go? What room would we be given? Would it be one of our rooms? Could I bear to do this? For a moment I was filled with dread and I ran. In my head I left daddy to take Xav as I felt sick at the thought of having to face the same nurses again. I flew from the potential situation and then I felt utterly guilty. How could I do it for you and not for Xav? Thankfully my darling this was all hypothetical as Xav fell asleep and rested until the morning. The whole family at the moment feels unsettled. We are all living with Jos being your age at your death and it screams anxiety and pain, all of us expressing it in different ways. I always sleep with you boys whenever you are ill and now as I lay there with Jos I am stroking his head too trying to calm him from the plight of a sickness bug and it is all too raw. I see him get up wearing you pyjamas and he walks stiffly feeling battered and bruised. It is you I see coping with your relentless pain and worry. I could never take anything away for you and as your mummy I will always wish I could have done something to save you, so that I could still see you, hear you and hold you. Instead all I could do today was put a picture of all of us up on my screen so that I can see us, as we ought to still be physically a family of six. Today my darling I have carried you on my front and I ache for you. I always will. Spending my birthday on Bracklesham beach, eating fish and chips under the sunset felt like we were altogether again. I braved going to see the house where we all stayed for our final family holiday as a complete family. Remembering the emotion of knowing we were choosing pebbles on the beach for us all to one day remember you by, the children unaware at this point of your end. I stood and I stared. In my head I was in every room with you. Helping you, watching you, hearing you, I relived the football matches in the garden and the pain you must have been in. I ache for your bravery and acceptance. Raw is the only way to explain how it hurts me, like a knife turning inside my heart. Well my gorgeous boy I approach another year of my life. Despite my continued anxiety for family health I am grateful for the years I have been given. In 41 years I have turned from shy to more confident, fulfilled my vocation to be a teacher, have married my soul mate, given birth to 4 beautiful boys, enjoyed the rough and the smooth of bringing you boys up, I have kissed you goodbye so painfully and yet so peacefully. I have lost friends who couldn’t cope with our new life and gained friends who mean the world to us. I have realised what matters in life. I have accepted that I will live for evermore with an open wound, which will never heal. When the wound isn’t bleeding my darling I will do my very best to love life and show your brothers how to live and love. All I pray is for their adulthood, independence, sensitivity towards others and a zest for life. My darling child you are my pride and joy. You are our everything and always will be. God bless you I love you. Always and forever Mummy x