Dear Thi,

Our lovely Thisy it has been a very long time since I wrote to you, not because I had nothing to say, or that I didn’t want to say it to you, purely because it was time to rest and try and get to grips with life without mania, or at least reduced mania. In the time away there has been no difference to our grief, just the same cycle turning over and over.

Five years on I realise how some people in the cycle of grief can live with a mania in order to just see them through the day. Sometimes that mania diminishes sometimes it stays. For me it has diminished but not gone, I hope it never goes. On the one hand I am enjoying being less manic and surprising myself that I am able to enjoy a day with nothing booked and on the other hand as your anniversary approaches I am filled day in day out with this heavy burden. I wish I could explain it but I can only say it is like a heavy weight on my shoulders that I can’t shake off. Maybe I’m not meant to shake it off darling boy! One thing that is significant is that it is equally as painful, if not more so, on your 5th anniversary as it was the day we kissed you goodbye.  

So many significant things have happened since I last wrote……..…..…….

September 2015

Who would have thought the new school term would be quite so troublesome. Jos encroaches on his first week of homework, planners, maps, new teachers, good teachers and quite frankly some rather rubbish ones, remembering which P.E uniform is needed for which P.E lesson and so the list is endless. What is apparent is that everyone is crippled by your absence at this moment in time. I am in turmoil trying to make secondary school bearable for Jos knowing he is desperate to have you there as his guide. Xavier has spent a week walking around with a picture of you and him and in a silent time with me asks questions about death. Your death and when I knew you were going to die. Whether you were hungry when you were unable to eat. Whether I would prefer to have you alive and constantly on chemo knowing the chemo would eventually kill you anyway, or dead.

Thisy, there are so many questions going around these beautiful boys minds. Jos is more silent about his grief. Alone he asked what sort of pain you had when this horrendous journey began. “Is it like the pain in my coexists mum?”….. silent anxiety rips through me. Poor Jos is simply trying to affirm that he is ok and not suffering the same type of pain as you. It’s amazing how the boys are able to talk to relieve their own pain and anxieties. Reassurance is given in honesty.

Jonas takes himself off in a fit of anger after something didn’t go quite his way. He sits alone and in time comes in to say, “I sat thinking about Thisy.” He then proceeds to cuddle your Pudsey bear, which for him is a first and now I realise the grief of this 3 year old when you died is rearing the beginning of the cycle now nearly 4 years on. 4 years and yes still it is like yesterday that I was finding the strength to allow you to go. I am so grateful for the fact that we as a family have kept you central to our existence. If we hadn’t carried on speaking about you I just wonder what state would Jonas be in? If we had followed a path of silence I believe he would now be in a confused, uncomfortable and messy headspace unable to express and start his grief cycle. I believe this is a lesson for us all. We must not presume that a young child doesn’t remember or feel anything from the death of a family member. I believe that they are merely too young and therefore are not emotionally mature enough to speak about their grief. Wait, keep talking and you may find that they become of age where all of a sudden they are emotionally mature enough to start their grief cycle. We then have to be very aware that they may be a certain number of years, days or months behind the rest of the family’s cycle. Keeping talking about you has been an open door for Jonas to start his cycle.  My heart aches for us all. My own aching is bearable, my children's aching is more than I care to describe. In fact it is indescribable.

January 2016

Jos celebrated his 12th birthday and that encountered many transitions, the birthday I never thought I would see any one of my children reach, and each one feeling like a gift. Jos in his loud silence has clearly been working many factors out since you died. “Mum” he says, “I've wished for Liverpool to start scoring goals.” “Really Jos?”  I said in a tone that echoed the thoughts of shallowness. Then he said, “Well every other year I wished for Thi to come back to life and that isn't going to happen is it?” You think the children understand all we have been through and then they throw a curve ball at you.
Did my lovely boy honestly think if he wished hard enough when blowing out his celebration candles that he would get you back? For 4 years he has been silently wishing for you back. The conversation from there was warm and heart felt. He will never stop loving you Thi, never.

In my less manic moments I assume it gives us time to look at what is going on inside us. I always say it is a never-ending cycle of grief. When in it and at its thickest point it feels like there is no escape that it will never end. The grief can eat away at you if it is not recognised and acted upon. It can rear its ugly head in many ways. Anger, tears, or for me pure anxiety. For three months after the 4th anniversary of your death I struggled with my anxiety relating to my health. I am well and nothing is wrong with me yet I can create any life threatening condition in my head and it feels real. I feel real symptoms and I start to tell myself something must be wrong. I have absolutely no fear of dying, as I believe I will be reunited with you my darling Thisy. But I have a huge fear of dying leaving my three living boys without a Mummy.  They need me, all children need their mum but my boys have been through so much accepting your death that I couldn't begin to bear the pain that would be left for Daddy and the boys. My headspace periodically is being consumed by negative time, wasting time with fear. So, recognizing it is one thing dealing with it is the essential element to eliminating this crushing existence. Doctors tell me I am well and I have to believe them.  Nothing beats really talking about what is going on inside the scrambled headspace. Talking to friends, councilors and of course Daddy who knows me inside out.  Headspace, being consumed by negative time-wasting fear needs to be eliminated. I know life is too short. Live it, love it, get on with it, grab every bit of it and use it well. We are lent it for only a while. We must make the most of all we have.

March 2016

After dealing with my own anxieties. The Spring pokes it head around the corner to me and I am re-energized. My spirit is lifted and I am thinking more clearly. Just in time to help the boys again….….


Jonas asks whether he said goodbye to you, remembering that Jonas was only 3 when you died means his emotional maturity was not as it is now.  I show him the much-used Shooting Star chase album that I created. I show him pictures of all you 4 boys together for the last time. “It was here my darling” I say to Jonas that you said, “I love you Thi and goodbye.” Jonas looks at the photo, looks at me and says, “Did I really say that?”

October 2016

Jonas now 8 is truly in the cycle of grief and now emotionally mature enough to start vocalizing his thoughts and feelings.  I think back and am so pleased that we as a family keep talking about you Thi and keep you in the centre of all we do, for if we hadn’t been able to talk about you Jonas wouldn’t be able to start and experience his own grief cycle and I then wonder where would he be now? How would he be emotionally?  When we were in America for your treatment Jonas was just 2. When we returned to America after your death he was 3 and he remembered many things that one could presume he was ‘too young to remember’. America is so much more than a fun place to holiday, for Jonas America is all about you Thisy. It is everything about being one family living and holding each other up. Spending time together with no other worry than to get us to the other end of treatment. America is his biggest memory of you. We have to return one day, for all of our souls are crying out to feel that sentiment of the most precious time in our lives.  A time when we believed we would be saved from final goodbyes.

Jos has become inquisitive, maturing and needing to confirm what he knows and remembers. He has been asking questions about your chemo, its effects, how it made you feel. He needs a more mature understanding of what you really went through. Some discussions for me are like open-heart surgery. My real stabbing pains lie in remembering all the grueling treatment, the pain, worry, frightening days where all we could say as parents is ‘you’re so brave Thi’.


Then there is our emotional walking sunbeam. Xav is the spit of you Thisy in many ways. His emotions run high, he talks, he cries, we cuddle, we talk some more, I tell him how Daddy and I feel and that it’s ok to feel pain and sadness. We can spend an hour going through your memory box talking, but sometimes it's not enough. Xav needs something tangible. He wants to see, to hold you. So he takes your bear off Jos' bed and hangs your last football boots on his bedpost and ploughs through photos to place his body back into some resemblance of comfort. This time is a precious remembering time and one that allows him to empty his overflowing bag of grief.

I have one aim in my mission as mother. That is to get my boys to adulthood, God willing without being screwed up about the fact they had to say goodbye to their brother too soon. There are no guarantees in life and there are no rules to follow but I believe that talking about you honestly, about our own adult feelings honestly, is taking us a long way down our journey of acceptance.

December 23rd 2016

So today we will celebrate 5 years since you died. 5 years flashing before our eyes.
It has taken me a long time to write again. I have time again as my mania slows down. I have relished in being able to fundraise for Shooting Star Chase and Steven Gerrard Foundation. I will never stop working for them but in different ways. I will never be able to let go of all they did for us as a family.


There is no end to grief and so I have come to a junction. I always thought there was another direction for me and although I am a very long way from knowing exactly where that will be I am a small step pointing in the right direction. I will feel it and will know when it is right. Having taken myself to Chase and offered my services I have felt excitement and passion about the things that I have learnt in the 5 years since you died. I have felt empowered being able to teach professionals about our experience and indeed some changes have been made because of you Thisy. Good changes, changes that allow for Open, Honest and true talking. I have reveled, with elements of anguish, in telling people about you, how you led me and how we were able to be honest with each other. Your death has changed our world, turned it upside down, but talking all the time has meant we have learnt to accept the new world allowing us to help other people who also have the unbearable task of kissing their child or sibling goodbye. I pray your death may just change someone else’s world in a good way.

Teaching is in my soul and if one snippet of what I write makes someone turn around and say “Yes” or “I do or feel that too” or even better still use something said to help someone else then that is truly what this is all about.

Let's not be afraid to talk about our sadness, our pain, our anger, our love. Let's embrace the open-heart surgery and let the honesty flow so that we are free to love easier as the years go by. Never will our love be pain free but it may just allow us to live in a controlled, more comfortable, more bearable, accepting and honest way.

5 years today and it feels like yesterday that we said "its ok, we love you, we will be ok" it will never be ok but letting you leave us was our only path. You were an absolute winner accepting your end and as Daddy said  “there is not a day that goes by that we don't think of you Thisy, even on a fleeting moment.” We will be ok, because we will keep talking and teaching each other but, sadly we will never be complete again.

We love you darling boy.

Always and forever. X