Why does it have to be so fucking hard? I thought time was supposed to be a great healer? Well you know what? It still hurts like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus. Tomorrow my little boy will be three years old, and if life wasn’t so cruel I’d now be writing two birthday cards, wrapping two lots of presents and swearing over two birthday cakes I should have made sooner.
Tomorrow doesn’t just mark their birthday, it marks the start of the five hardest weeks of my calendar. Five weeks when I once had two sons, when I held them both and planned our future, when I came home from the hospital and pushed the double buggy round the living room practising for when they’d come home. Each year I dread this time in limbo and breathe a sorrowful sigh of relief when the anniversary has passed and I can start living again.
Has everyone forgotten my son? No-one mentions him any more, no-one gives me a hug and says how hard this day must be for us. How is it that no-one realises how much it still hurts? Happiness for one child’s future can’t ever dilute the grief one feels for another child’s past.
I know tomorrow should be a celebration of my lost son’s birthday, as much as it is a celebration for his living brother. But I defy you to find something, anything to celebrate about a baby who never lived to blow out his first candle.