Today it’s your birthday. You would have been 20! I’m not quite sure where that time has gone, but it has gone by so quickly.
As with every year since you were with us, the familiar smells of spring are in the air. The bluebells are just starting to show, and I’m feeling that sense of ‘I’m not sure quite what to call it’! But it’s still all too familiar. The cool breeze, that’s not quite summer, it’s not winter either. But it feels like a new beginning.
My memories are still quite vivid in places. The pain has never really gone away. I have just learned to live without you. But I know you are with me, just in a different way. I know because I saw the angels that came to you. I still see them. Their glow. Their tall presence at your cot. They were beautiful, but I was afraid. I thought they were taking you away too soon. But I now realise, they came to keep you with us for just a little longer.
This recent realisation has changed my perception of what I saw that night. I now know that the night I saw the angels, you were protected. We were being protected as it wasn’t time for you to go, just yet!
There were 3 of them, beautiful and they shone so brightly I was blinded. But I kept telling them to leave you. I did this as I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. You stayed, and I was grateful. My love was so strong, but their strength to keep you safe was much stronger.
We came to see you first thing in the morning as always. And we were told that you almost left us last night. But the staff fought to keep you alive. And we are forever indebted to them.
You see, I know now, that not everyone has seen an Angel, and not everyone can see them. I feel lucky, I saw three. We knew you were going to be with us for a short time, and we had accepted that. Even though our hearts were absolutely broken.
You got to fly in an aeroplane, when they took you ‘home’! We drove back to the hospital in Cardiff and met you back at the NICU, back to where you’d been before your stay at Great Ormond Street.
We knew your time was coming to an end, but we were strong. You showed us how to be stronger than we ever knew we could be. Your strength was above any other kind of strength I could have imagined. Your body was tiny, and you fought the bravest battle. You had scars, and ‘battle wounds’, a battle you couldn’t win.
We knew you were getting tired and your fight was too much. The day you left us, my heart shattered into a million pieces. Your brother and sister played innocently outside your ward with your grandfather. They were unaware of the pain we were going through on the other side of the wall. And for that I am grateful. We had to protect them, and be with you.
I am grateful to the doctor that was holding your tiny hand when we came into the room. His face said enough for us to know it was now. Your fingers were tinged with a blue colour as your little life ebbed away before us. The room was full of love and even though there were many tears, we knew your time had come.
You gave us nine weeks of love, strength and courage. You showed us what love really is. We also found strength and courage we never knew existed.
One day all of this will make sense. But I know you were given to us as a gift. Oliver, the world didn’t know you, but we did.
A parent’s love can never die. love never dies, this is why we feel so much pain when a loved one leaves us.
The events that I can’t explain, are the events that have given me hope. The angels, the book, and the person that sat with me. I still don’t know who or how this was. It just was!
My mind remains open to see and feel things that are brought to me that I can’t explain.
My love, as always, Mummy x