Dear Hamish

Today baby, I just want to talk to you, to pour out my heart to my beautiful boy and give you a sense of the magic you brought and continue to bring to my life.

You sparkled. You radiated and gave me unprecedented levels of peace.  When you were with me, I felt very calm. You had that ability. It's only now that you are gone that I realised, how for 20 short months, you were my comforter, my security blanket.  Just having you in my arms, made my heart bulge and my eyes glimmer. I still reach for you. In the dark, in the light, my arms hover, waiting for your essence, hoping for any element of you.  Grasping at the air, hoping for Hamish magic.

Sometimes I feel the futility of grief so powerfully that I wonder how it is possible that I still exist. The only way to escape that overwhelming feeling of desperation is to shut down a part of my brain and allow triviality to wreak havoc. Sometimes I'll look at pretty shoes online or drink hot chocolate with a magazine in a cafe. Anything but think in depth at the hollowness of my heart or the eternal ache in my head.  Without the escape, my mind would implode with excruciating sorrow, I'm sure of it.

I miss you so much, sometimes I don't want to crawl out of my cave-bed. I just want to stay, weep and feel the wretchedness of your absence.  But everyday I get dressed, put on make-up (minimal amounts anyway) and present myself to the world in various forms. I have a public face Hami. I do it for you, for your Daddy and for your sisters and brother.  Someone recognised me from my blog at the shops the other day. She said, "I don't know how you do it? I think you are amazing." I told her, I do it for your brothers and sisters. But that's not entirely true. I do it for you too.  I want you to be proud, I want you to point your mummy out to the other angels, like I used to do with you.  "Look at Hamish, so brave, so joyful, so sweet."

Someone told me the other day they lost a brother.  Although he missed his brother when he passed away in another senseless tragedy, it was his parents he really missed. He wanted his broken parents to be repaired, made whole, so they could function again as a family.  If you see me smiling and playing with your siblings, please know that I haven't forgotten you. You are permanently in my heart, etched into my soul. That every second I imagine you with us, adding to the beauty already in play.  You are mine. Forever part of everything I was, am and will be. You are my past, my present and my future. Love is like that, boundless, endless, without beginning and end.  To infinity and beyond (do you remember Buzz Lightyear?).

I'm sorry I haven't been at our tree lately. It's been raining constantly as you know. Perhaps I should just sit in the rain and be with you, let the wet drench my skin and shiver with its intensity.  I'd rather sit at my desk with all of my 'Hami things' and feel wrapped in your warmth and write with love. I hope you don't mind.  That's what I needed to do today. Sit and be with you.

Today I had coffee with Katie. She misses you too.  I adore Katie so much. She loved you not as your day carer, but as your second mum and for that I'm truly grateful.  She really knew how special you were. It's not in my mind. Katie felt it too. She told me when you were alive that she wanted to keep you, how she could see that little light burning bright within you, like I could.  I couldn't keep it together. I sobbed with every sip of my drink.  I think it's because Katie 'knows'. She knows the intensity of joy you brought and the intensity of its deficit.  She is struggling without you, as I am, but she also lives with you in her heart and she's learning how comforting that can be.

I've cried a million tears today my love. I think it's time for me to stop. To achieve some kind of peace today, I need to stop and take care of me.

Know that the love I have for you knows no end. Now and forever,


Your mummy. x