Dear Thisy Just as I posted your letter from last month two amazing things occurred. Firstly, the final total of your family fun day (Thi’s Burgers Bangers and Build) was announced at a staggering £19,174.76. I am so proud of what you have enabled us to do for other people Thi. I am also completely in awe of all the wonderful friends, family and acquaintances that have made this happen. Matthias you are a legend and we will continue to raise money for other people on your behalf. I just pray you can see and know what is happening on earth and that you can appreciate how wonderful you still are enabling other people some comfort in completion whilst they too have to go through a similar and equally as horrendous journey as us. The pain of never having you by our side will never go, it will never ease and the years that pass will never make it easier. What makes it easier is being able to feel what other people are feeling and be able to help in some way. Matthias my darling without you I would never have been in such a privileged position being able to give back to others and making a difference for their pain. The second occurrence was with your gorgeous brother Jos….. " Mummy is it possible to cry and yet not know why you are crying?" This child of mine, your brother is continually worrying me and then astounding me. " I'm sure my darling why?" I replied, " well today I was reading and I felt the tears and was thinking hold back hold back". He is wiser than most or at least as wise as you were and thankfully in tune with his emotions. I panic that he grieves silently and that it is very different to how Xav, Jonas and I grieve. I am learning that the silence is fine providing he can share the pain in some way so that he has emptied his bag of sadness. I can’t tell you how proud I am of your brothers, that they are able to tell me how your death is affecting them. Jos and I both knew that he was about to have a meltdown. I thanked Jos for sharing his words and thoughts with me and told him I often cry without knowing why I have cried. The most important element to this is that the boys are continually reassured that whatever they feel it is perfectly normal for them. I believe a mummy’s reassurance that the ‘same thing’ happens to them all the time is a security blanket for our children. Reassurance and security is the key to being confident and brave enough to express ourselves and therefore be able to empty the bag of sadness. I pray this is the case for the boys. I opened a birthday present from my aunty today. A stunning bracelet with a stone in the centre, which looks and reminds me of the sea, our sea, our Wittering times. I rang her to thank her and I embarked on a wonderful conversation with her. She asked how I was. I answered, "Ok, as long as I keep running and don't stop!" She answered, as only she really knows "my darling I've been running for 40 years." She is the most amazing woman on this earth that I have the pleasure of knowing and loving. She has proved to me that you can get through a long and happy life despite having to live without your child or two in her case physically in your arms. I guess that means I've still got a great deal of running to do then Thisy! I will keep running and I won’t stop, the question is will I feel like I have run the race or will I feel completely exhausted? Only time will tell. There have been moments that I have felt broken today. We all have to get on and do mundane living. It just brings out the pain in me when I am having a mundane day. A day when I am only jogging and not running I suppose! My strength gets taken away from me and I know I have to keep going. Mundane is just not fast enough for me. Yet mundane is so important to allow the opportunity to empty the bag of sadness. I study the outline of a picture of you Thi, and you have exactly the same profile as Daddy. I had never truly noticed it before. God I wish I could see you and hold you again. Sometimes I take the time to step back and look in at my life and question it. How do we keep living on without you physically in our grasp? Has this really happened? Why does it feel so fresh some days and raw yet other days feels like an eternity without you? The question asked the most by most parents is how do we do it? all I can say is, you just do and I suppose that’s the running in life. Everyday is painful. Some days I have hidden grief, some days silent grief and other days more open. But, I will never hide the pain as and I will always share it with those that ask and even sometimes those that don’t ask because that pain is my love for you and I will never hide my love for you my darling boy. Thi, today I heard about how our lovely friend had to say goodbye to their dog. I wept. I was completely torn apart for their grief. I was confused why I was hurting so much about a dog. Some people try to relate to the ‘levels of pain’ and often say the death of a child has to be the worse. I guess most people especially parents would say so and in some respects I do agree with this yet I do believe pain is pain when it comes to death. It's the crippling pain that love leaves behind. If you have invested years of love into something, or someone then the pain of not being able to give that love anymore is too great to bear. My only consolation is that you have proved and shown me with such eloquence that dying is easy. Being left behind is the difficulty. We have had a small rocky road to walk. Xav had a small issue at school where he was misunderstood. He came home and told me all about it in his usual open fashion. The pain and the grief deep in his eyes made my heart ache. I tried to tell him to say what was in his heart rather than his mind when talking to people and especially his teacher and he looked at me with anxiety and pain and said, " How can I when she doesn't know about Thi?" I felt completely at a loss and as if I had let him down. I should have communicated with his teacher in September about the boys. I knew she knew about you but I hadn’t approached and explained what happens with our meltdowns or falls. Why did I presume that Xav would be alright? Was I falling into the completely mistaken thinking that time will heal? I of all people know we will never heal so why didn’t I protect Xav? I was cross with myself and felt like I had let him down and you too as I promised you at your bedside in Chase that I would make sure the boys would be alright. Thank goodness he has a wonderful teacher who, between us, had this sorted within 24hrs. Stay with him Thisy as he muddles through his pain. My darling boy another month passes by and I will never be able to express how much we miss you. Things happen in life all the time and I am sure you send these things to us, as they seem too fitting. I was speaking with the events co ordinator at Chase arranging our next venture and she announced she had to do a visitors tour around Chase. As I looked on facebook later that night I realised that the people she was showing around was, among others, people from Children with cancer UK. What a small and connected world we are in. Aunty and Uncle are huge ambassadors for Children with cancer UK and have been carrying out multiple fundraisers to research, in particular your type of cancer, to try and kill it and never let anyone else be affected by it. Face book read that Children with Cancer UK want to support Chase. We have connected and completed yet another full circle. Matthias my darling boy, you are making such a difference to the lives of so many. I am proud to say you are my son, my child, my boy. You will always be centre to our lives and we will never let you be anything else. You keep us running, I will run and run until we meet at the summit and I hold you again, forever. I love you Mummy x