Dear Alex, Disjointed...

Dear Alex,

Like grappling at skittles, too many to carry, they slip and tumble away...I sit at 10.30pm to blow up balloons, wrap up presents. She is 5, our baby...And we never did have the fifth...It was being planned, and then you had the accident.

So now she turns five our baby.

Certain events I struggle to come to terms with. I've managed, I get through everyday life, mostly, now. But birthdays, Christmas, times we should be together... The memories of you blowing up the balloons, us wrapping presents, chatting about their future, their past, who they are and how much they have given us. How we could never believe we were old enough to be parents..And of how quickly they grew and how we had to be so conscientious as parents to get it as right as we could, be better than we could be, role models...together.

I have burned the first cake, I will have to put the second in around midnight.

I don't want to be a parent alone anymore.

I don't want to parent alone.

I wrote this in the eve of Esmie's birthday, I am snatching at time to write, this entry is disjointed, just as I feel at times present...

Sitting out in the sun of the Nursing home, I have never felt so humbled. Witnessing our four kids, the four kids of another mummy whose young husband is in the room just along from you, play. They play at piggy back races, they run, they race, they play hide-and-seek. Another fairly young couple are there too. His wife 3 years down the line form a severe brain haemorrhage. What I notice is our constant touch. I sit in your lap, your arm around me, the other mummy drapes herself around her husband, the husband caresses continuously his wife's head and hair. We talk, we discuss life in depth and things lighthearted. Three couples, an understanding profound of how it is for each other, the sadness that sets itself behind eyes full of struggles and smiles...I feel so humbled. How the kids play, how the touch of the spouse to reassure, to hope and heal...I have rarely been so astonished by love and life stories and the happiness of kids, despite. Despite the fact that for the kids ours play with,'dad' is how he is, that the wife of the husband have 6 kids, 4 grand kids and have been together nigh on 30 years...how humbling today has been.

How incredible and how strong and how inspiring some people are...

Thank you God my Alex is still here...for the journey we are about to go on, the journey we have already been on, for the places you take me, the things you are showing me and the people I meet...

I am so in love with you Alex,

Me xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx