My Journey To Hell & Back (and the things I thought about along the way)

This is my true story about my perfect son who couldn't stay. Obviously it is sad, but I hope you will also find it to be, hopeful, funny and thought provoking. It is written straight from the heart.

Obviously, this is for Archie.

Thank you for all you have taught me.

But also it’s a little for anyone who has lost their child.

My heart goes out to you. I wish you gentler times ahead.

PROLOGUE

Someone, either my Mum or my Dad said to me, when you are feeling a bit better, you will have to try and remember the things which people said which were helpful. So I sat down one day to try and figure it out and this is what came tumbling out. Spewing all over the keyboard, so fast I could not type quick enough to keep up. It became my little habit. To rise early, that magic time of day. When the mist hangs over these tree lined Cornish valleys. To feed the animals then drive to check the ponies. All the time thinking about the next chapter, normally thinking so hard I almost collide with an unsuspecting farmer coming the other way.

Out of my window while I type, I have witnessed the most beautiful of autumns I can remember. Nature this year has outdone herself in an amazing array of red and gold. But now that has moved on and winter is beating its tattoo on the pane. But it’s welcome, so very welcome this year.

This is my story for those of you who wish to read it. I will tell you now it is not a very happy story. But read on try and get through the bit where my baby dies (twice). See, I’ve even warned you what happens, I am sorry if it is sad, but then sometimes life is. I am sorry if it brings a tear to your eye, but actually, I would go so far as to say, if it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye. Put this to one side, this isn’t a story for you to read. But if it makes you weep a little, read on. I hope maybe it will make you think, maybe it will make you smile a bit and if any of you can find it in your hearts to be a little inspired then I would be truly honoured.

I can’t imagine who would ever want to read it. It isn’t even a proper story it’s just the musings of a grief stricken mind. I know what some people will say. I can imagine Big Sister taking all these pages in her quick little hands. “It’s counselling, it’s her own form of counselling.”

She is probably right, I don’t know and at the moment I choose not to care enough to worry about it. I will send it to Dad though, Dad who believes in me and inspires me, just to say, “look I finished something, now I’m off to write a pony story, jolly good show.”

CHAPTER 1

THE PERFECT DAY

Okay, so here’s the thing, when faced with a crisis your thoughts are sometimes a bit jumbled. I’m sitting in an air ambulance as it hovers near the ground, watching the medics with a trolley and a whole heap of equipment. And I’m thinking “Oh some poor sod must be having a s**t day.” 

Then I realise that poor sod is me.

So it lands, the nice medic helps me out and they all leg it. I mean properly sprint none of this jogging stuff. I try and follow. It’s f*****g hard to sprint when yesterday you gave birth.

And all the time I’m thinking what’s the point he is already dead. I wasn’t born yesterday I know the difference between dead and alive. I guess that’s the point, he was born yesterday.

Yesterday morning with the rising sun, my son was born. Perfect and healthy. Myself (who was slightly reeling from the efforts of him going from the inside mummy state to the outside mummy state) and my husband were to say the very least, well chuffed, actually, lets be slightly more truthful. We were absolutely f*****g ecstatic. Excuse the fact that is two F words in the first four paragraphs but I feel they were both justified.

So we, that is myself, my husband and my son have this one perfect day. Where we all hang out and look at each other and are all pretty pleased. Then the following morning my husband and I are still looking at him, still with the stupid grins on our faces. And I think “he looks a bit still” and my brain is staying “You stupid neurotic new mother of course he’s still, he’s asleep”. So I pick him up expecting him to look at me in that grumpy way, like his Dad does when you wake him up. And. NOTHING.

Now here’s the thing, my husband isn’t just my husband, he is also my best friend and my soul mate. When someone is your soul mate words are useless and irrelevant.

So we look at each other. Not for long, probably a quarter of a second at the very most. But we say, in that no need to use words way. “Oh S**t. F**k. S**t he’s dead. F**k. He’s dead for no reason. They are never going to find a reason. Our lives are going to be changed forever. Oh S**t. F**k.” We have both always had terrible language.

So nothing is said, but suddenly I’m on the phone dialling 999 and husband is giving our baby CPR.

But we both know he’s not coming back.

We watched him die. Actually that day we get to watch him die twice.

CHAPTER 2

ME AND GOD

You know sometimes I think God just get’s the blame for too much stuff. See I’ve got a theory about God. Now I’m not saying I believe in God. I’m just saying that if there is a God then this is my theory. I have other theory’s about the whole life and death stuff too. But this is my God theory.

God was really old in the beginning, I mean you pick up any illustrated children’s bible and there he is creating the world, massive beard, wrinkly hands, he was no young whipper snapper even back then. And that was ages ago, so by now I’m guessing he must be really ancient. And old men get stuff wrong. I’ve got an old collie dog �" really old and he just finds life a bit confusing, so who’s to say that God’s not a bit like that too. Or possibly he’s got some young apprentice, maybe God thought, I’m getting too old to do this on my own, I’ll get a young lad to give me a hand. My husband has apprentices at his garage, sometimes they are really good, other times (more often) they are a bit thick. Just a bit dense in that adolescent boy way, they will probably be okay in a few years time. So anyway God gets this apprentice, he’d be called Rory or Clive or something and God thinks, what can I put him in charge of? So he put’s him in charge of, say, rain. Thinking that’s nice and easy. Now Rory turns on the tap and then is looking up his mates on face book.

God comes back in “Rory the tap is still on”.

“Oh s**t sorry God”

“You’ve flooded Pakistan, your going to kill thousands of people.”

“S**t sorry, really didn’t mean too, was just checking out Bob’s new girlfriend on facebook.”

See that wasn’t what God meant to happen. He was just looking the other way for a minute. Or maybe he was in charge of the rainfall but his hands are a bit old and shaky these days and he just poured on more than he meant to.

Two examples to back up this theory.

I’ve already mentioned that I have a very old collie. He is deaf, blind, full of arthritis, has a heart condition and has already had a stroke. My sister had a much younger collie who was in the prime of his life. Now I don’t know if God just messed up, maybe he was busy trying to deal with civil unrest in the far east, and being a bit old just got it wrong, or whether he told Rory to deal with it and Rory couldn’t be bothered to look into it properly. But on the list of ‘things to die today’ it must have said :

Entry No 125984414: Wootton Girl’s Collie Dog.

Now clearly that was meant to be my collie dog. Don’t get me wrong I will be heart broken when his time comes, but I won’t feel robbed of his life as he has already lived it. No slightly senile and confused God, or a little bit thick Rory took the sisters Collie. WRONG. Whoops.

Example 2

We have a neighbour, now immediately you’ll probably think, ‘yes well, most people have neighbours.’ But we live up a half mile track in the middle of nowhere. There is just our rented house and our neighbour’s bungalow. We all muddle along just fine. They are a fairly old couple. We get mumbled at for driving up the track too fast, the Old Collie takes his revenge by shitting in their garage every morning, (I do try to stop him, but a determined old collie is a force to be reckoned with). But really we are all quite fond of one another. Our neighbour was born in the house we live in, my son was born at home. At the time our son died our neighbour was in hospital having suffered a near fatal heart attack. Entry on God’s ‘to die today’ list must have been.

Entry No 2156414154 : Male, normal place of residence Bowdah Farm (actually was born there).

So God who was busy and had a stress headache, or Rory was doing the deaths and also trying to play on his Nintendo Wee, looked at our little farm and saw only two males. My husband and my son (the other older ill one was in hospital and therefore slightly harder to find). So maybe they actually thought, ‘that’s a bit weird, neither of them seem ready to go.’ Maybe they double checked the list, ‘Yes born at Bowdah, must be the baby then, shame, seems a bit harsh’.

Wrong God / Rory, but I can see how the mistake was made.

And I would like to clarify at this point that I do not want my neighbour to die.

God is very, very old, you have to cut him a bit of slack if he gets a bit confused at times.

CHAPTER 3

YOU CAN DIE TWICE

Here’s the thing, Air Ambulances only have room for the patient and one other.

Actually, rewind, we haven’t even got out the house yet. This might be relevant, you can tell me if I’m a heartless cow. I’m running to the air ambulance and I should be thinking “            “. Actually I don’t know what I should be thinking. No one has ever told me what to think in a time like this. I can tell you what I actually thought. I thought, s**t must text the gang or they are going to turn up and there will be no one here.

Now to clarify ‘the gang’ is my family who are all coming to see their new grandson / nephew today. I know they have already left. So I text my Mum while running. Then I look at the sky and think, “it’s going to be hot. Oh God, the dog” (not the old collie but the other one with massive ears, more on her later). See, she sleeps out the back in the conservatory. Actually that is a far to grander term for it, it’s more of a glass lean too. She likes it out there at night, I think she likes looking at the stars, or maybe she just likes to be away from the collie who snores and farts all night. Whichever, she likes it out there at night, but on a sunny day it would be far too hot for her. So I turn around and go back to the house and say to Husband about the dog. Now he may have thought about it by himself but probably not because he is a man. I am not being horrible about men, but this is a fact about men.

There is only enough room in a man’s brain for one thought at a time.

And I know that currently, my man’s brain is all used up thinking about his son.

Then I run to the air ambulance and get in. I still I manage to do all this before the medics have got in. That because I’m a frantic mother.

Which brings us back to the beginning, with all that sprinting. In the hospital it is all a bit frantic. I’m thinking, ‘leave him alone, he has gone,” but your not allowed to say that. It would be deemed wrong.

There is a nice nurse, now she is the perfect nurse for her role. I don’t know if this is how they choose nurses for comforting mothers of dead babies but it definitely should be on the application form. How massive are your b***s? Hers were perfect. She was one of those round warm people. And so I sink my head into those big warm b***s and sob. Now the thing with proper crying is you don’t just leak from your eyes but also from your nose. So when I next lift my head she is covered in snot. She, bless her, doesn’t mention it.

It is around this time that my legs stop working, there is no warning they just stop doing their job 

of holding up my body. The nice nurse with the b***s, half carries half drags me too a chair. Someone then brings her a cup of tea. Now, I know it is her tea because I have noticed that the shift has just begun and one person has made all the staff a cup of tea and is now handing them round. The nice, snot covered nurse, notices me eyeing her cup of tea. She gives it to me. Now this is a great act of human kindness, for all I know she could of got up this morning, found the milk had gone off and not had her morning cup of tea. Then maybe she got stuck in traffic on her way to work and then not been able to park. She could of walked through the hospital doors to be handed me, who then snotted all over her bust before collapsing. But she hands over the tea insisting I take it. And here is the one nice thing God did for me that day, that cup of tea was perfect. I have three sugars in my tea. I don’t know anyone else who takes that much sugar. When I go to other people’s houses and ask for three sugars they always look at me as if I’d asked for a line of coke. But that nurse took three sugars in her tea.

Suddenly there is more excitement round the resuss table, where my boy is. Someone is saying something about a heartbeat. I think (because I am an evil mother) oh God no, don’t bring him back, he’s been gone for almost forty minutes. He was absolutely perfect, but he won’t be anymore.

A professional sort of lady peels herself away from the group and comes to me. She crouches in front of me as though I were a terrified dog. She takes both my hands in hers meaning that I have to try and wedge the cup of tea between my thighs which is painful given my current condition. Big B**b nurse see’s my dilemma and holds the cup for me. (See told you she was really nice). The professional lady lips are moving and I realise she is saying something to me. I concentrate really hard and she is telling me they have a heartbeat but there is no chance of any longevity of life and he will die as soon as they take off all the machines. I nod, I think that was the correct reaction, she is still looking at me like I might take flight at any moment or punch her or scream hysterically and tear my hair out. I nod again.

Suddenly we are off to another room. I have to leave Big B**b nurse which makes me very sad, I try and give her back what is left of her tea. But she pushes the mug back into my hands. I look down at it and realise that what remains of the tea is diluted with tears, snot and dribble, all of which cling to the inside of the mug. I can understand why she doesn’t want it back.

The next room is hot, very hot, they can’t open the window in case he gets an infection, which is random when he is going to die anyway. I sit with my dead but not dead son and wait for his Dad. Now I am more than a little concerned, as I stated earlier only I could go in the air ambulance, there is only enough room for one passenger. So Husband has to drive down. We live an hour from the nearest hospital. Anyone would be worried about one they love driving in this situation especially as today, so far, things haven’t really been going our way.

Anyway I am especially worried as Husband is a mechanic, no go back, that would offend him, he is a garage proprietor and he has worked bloody hard to be that. Therefore as you could probably deduce he kind of likes cars, so he owns a souped up super fast, super powerful car, it’s red, from a female perspective that’s really all that’s important. Now before you picture big boy racer exhaust pipe and neon lights, don’t, that is so uncool.

Here’s a fact; you have to work within an industry before you know what is really cool.

Car’s which looked souped up are crap, apparently, it has to look original with things done to it so it goes faster. I’m biased but Husband is very, very good at what he does, so the red car goes really, really fast.

While on the subject of cool, I do get this completely. I have always worked in the horse industry. It is so uncool to wear jodhpurs when riding on a daily basis. You’ll find any professional horse person normally wears jeans and half chaps. There, see, you didn’t know that did you? It’s an industry secret, like the souped up car thing.

Anyway I am worried because I’m thinking, fast car and upset Husband is a really bad combination.

He makes it in one piece.

But the world had played a little trick on him. You see, when he arrived at the hospital he dumped the red car in front of main reception. (There are times in life when you really can’t be bothered to que up behind a load of very confused people, and try and enter your car registration and the correct change into a ticket machine.) He had gone into reception and explained who he was, they had told him that our boy was stable and in an incubator. Both these facts are true, but I think you will agree that they give the wrong impression. So he walks into the really hot room, and says in that way without any words. “So really, is it true, is he okay?”

And I say without any words, “No we were right, he is going to die”

Then I have to use words to explain it. Now he hasn’t yet done the crying, snotting thing as he couldn’t really do it while keeping the red car on the road. So he does it now. I try and cradle him in my b***s like the Big B**b nurse did for me. I wouldn’t imagine I was anywhere near as successful. My b***s are not big at the best of time’s, to be fair they were the biggest then that they have ever been, but still not very big and they were hard in that milk for baby way. So I can’t imagine they were particularly comfortable, but I don’t know for sure I’ve never asked him.

Anyway then we sat in the hot room. Now we hadn’t thought about the family travelling down to see us, we have both turned off our mobiles, so they can’t get hold of either of us. They have been ringing round all the hospitals trying to find out which one we have gone to, as there are four hospitals all about an hour from where we live. Eventually they get the right one. The problem is no one will tell them anything due to patient confidentiality.

You know the world has gone mad, when they are not allowed to tell a parent what has happened to their daughter’s baby.

Finally they get a message through that they are going to keep on coming. So we decide to wait before we turn the machines off, so they can at least see our baby. We also ring Husband’s family and they all want to come down.

So we end up with this weird party in the hot room.

The Dads

I feel the Dad’s need a mention here. There were actually three Dad’s in the hot room as Husband has a step Dad as well as the real thing. But for the moment I am just talking about the biological Dad’s. Everybody cried, everybody was upset. Now, I think everybody was sad, obviously because our baby had died. They were sad for us because they love us. They were sad because they were never going to really get to meet their Nephew / Grandson who we had all been so eagerly awaiting and dreaming about. And they were sad because it is just really S**t.

But I think the Dad’s got it on a different level. They didn’t cry, they wept, Husband had never seen his Dad cry, I have only seen mine cry once and that was when his own Mum died. They were both absolutely stricken with grief. I think this is why, I think, they looked at our Son and they didn’t see our Son, or a nearly dead baby. They saw everything he was, all that he was and they loved him so very, very much and they were just heartbroken he had gone.

I’ve got a whole new respect for the Dad’s for that.

Enough anyway for today. Too much sadness.

CHAPTER 4

DAD

Right, okay, apologies this is jumping around all over the place. Now I thought long and hard, about which order to do everybody in and decided for the sake of fairness to do it chronologically. Then I had to decide whether to put my Mum or Dad first, I was thinking about so hard this morning, I almost crashed my truck. Obviously, well one would hope, they were both there at the time of my conception. But then I thought, actually, they count your pregnancy from two weeks before conception, and Mum carried me for those nine months so really, she knew me first. Therefore I decided on Mum first.

So I’m doing Dad.

I don’t know, I think you just have to meet Dad first to understand Mum.

Anyway it turns out that I seem to be doing Dad’s mother first. She wasn’t going to be in this story at all, but here she is demanding her own bit. I do think maybe we need to meet her to understand him. So here is a paragraph on her. Here she is again, I can hear her.

“A paragraph Eleanor. A paragraph, I think I deserve more than that.”

Look, I’ll give you your own sub heading.

Dad’s Mother

She is not a woman to be appeased by a bit of bold type face. And no, my name is not Eleanor she just always insisted on calling me that, I have no idea why.

She knew grief in her life. She didn’t shirk from it but carried it with dignity and elegance. Like a pretty enamelled broach always pinned to her lapel. She seemed to say, “this is me, this is part of me, I am not afraid of it, I will carry it with me always.”

I admire her for that so much, it is making me cry.

Her soul mate, (and I have absolutely no doubt that he was, even though I never had the privilege to meet him), was my Dad’s father. An RAF engineer. Together they had two perfect children, a girl and a boy. One day he never came home.

Now I think about this a lot. Any female reading this will know that men have issues with time keeping. They turn up hours late from work or wherever and say “oh sorry, I didn’t think you would worry.”

So one day my Dad’s mother puts her six year old daughter and four year old son to bed. She reads them each a story and tucks them in. She goes back downstairs and fusses over her husband’s tea and thinks, ‘he’s a bit late, what a horrible night to be out on a motorbike, his dinner will be ruined.’ But she’s not really worried. Not yet.

She waits, maybe takes out her sewing and mends her little boy’s trousers. Now she is a bit more worried. There are no mobile phones in those days, she probably hasn’t even got a house phone.

She has a bath thinking, ‘he will definitely be home when I get out. His dinner really is ruined now, what can I make for him instead, he will be cold and tired. It really is a dreadful night.’

She gets out the bath. Still no sign. She opens the door and looks up and down the street. 

Nothing. Now she really is worried. She goes back inside and waits. But she can’t settle to anything.

Then there is a knock on the door. She opens it, to a dark rainy night with a roaring wind. A policeman stands on her door step his helmet in his hands looking grave. Her stomach is in her mouth and a voice in her head is screaming, ‘no, no, no, don’t say it, please don’t say it, if you don’t say it, it won’t be true.’

He checks her name.

She nods.

“I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you this, your husband had been killed in a motorbike accident. I am so sorry for your loss.”

And I tell you what, I bet she thanked him.

I bet she thanked him, shut the door. Turned back to her little sitting room, lay on the sofa, clutched at her own stomach as if she could physically hold herself together, and wept, quietly so as not to wake her children.

That was it. The life she had dreamt of, her plans, her hopes, her soul mate. Gone.

What did she do? Did she stand in the corner banging her head against the wall? Did she sit at home and wait for someone to rescue her? Or did she pull herself upright. Take a deep breath. Look the world square in the eye, and say, ‘I will go on, I will go on for my children and because I owe it to the man that I loved.’ And so she did, it is as simple as that, and yet so very, very difficult.

I don’t know if those facts about his death are correct, I don’t even know if I’ve got the age of my father correct. I do not know, I have never asked, he could have been killed in broad daylight on sunny day for all I know. But I can promise you that she thought those things and that is what she did.

Now, I have yet to tell you my soul theory. But I am pretty sure she was an old soul. She just ‘got it’. She was peaceful, composed and didn’t thrash with the complexities of life. This was her big test and she passed with flying colours. So when she went, and she went quite early, she was not yet a really old or ill lady. She just upped and left because her soul’s time was up.

Or the other theory, the one with God and Rory also works. You see it could be like this:

She was not a lady for nonsense. So, she finds herself in God’s waiting room full of old people. An old man shuffles over a bit to make room for her on a bench, he sneezes into his hand and then wipes the slime down his brown corduroy trousers which are held up with a bit of bailer twine, she can catch the smell of him from where she is standing. She smiles at him gracefully as she is not an unkind lady and then strides over to the reception desk, her well made slightly high heels making a brisk clipping noise on the floor. Now Rory is on reception duty today. He is playing Call of Duty 3 on his X-box. He doesn’t look up. Dad’s Mother clears her throat. Rory glances at her and gestures towards the ticket machine.

“Take a ticket and wait for your number to be called.”

Dad’s Mother turns a cold gaze onto him. “I don’t think so my good man.”

And she is gone. Clipping her way through the pearly gates which swing obediently open for her.

Rory looks up, bemused, but all he is left with is a gentle smell of lavender.

On the other side of the gates, God looks up from where he is trying to find the answer to world peace, a little startled at the intrusion. He immediately recognises her as one of his favourites and gives a little wave. She acknowledges him with a smile and a nod of her head, but she is looking for someone else. Then she spots him striding towards her, he’s in his uniform with a wide smile on his face. He reaches her and swings her round clutching her too him and in that second she is young again, in the prime of her life.

She buries her head in his chest and cries. (Come on, she is bound to, it doesn’t matter how tough and poised she is). Then she takes his dear, dear face in her hands and looks into his eyes.

“I am very, very cross with you for going off and leaving me when you did. It has been a very long time and it was a long and difficult road to travel on my own.”

He has the good grace to look a little guilty then takes her by the hand (which is all she has wanted for the last forty odd years) and he says,

“Do you fancy a bite to eat, love? You must be hungry.”

And together the enter Heaven’s best restaurant where I can guarantee she will order a small piece of marrow. 

Now, Dad’s Mother, are you happy? You got a damn sight more than a paragraph, let me get on and deal with Dad.

Dad is a complete contradiction of a person and I think it makes his head hurt.

Now, that sounded unkind and it wasn’t meant to be. It’s just that, when I was growing up my Dad was this magical being. He showed us (my sisters and I) that the world is full of magic. He showed us the magic of an early morning when the world is yet to wake and for that moment in time, it seems to belong just to you. He showed us the brilliant beauty of autumn when the trees are dipped in gold. He showed us the happiness of days of wind and sun, when as little people we would run and chase the leaves falling from the aforementioned trees. He showed us the majestic beauty of the waves, the inspiring stars, the brilliance of the sun.

I look round every day and see all the magic in the world. Dad showed me that magic and he taught me how to use my heart and my soul to find the magic on my own.

I don’t think my Dad see’s that magic any more. This makes me very sad. I don’t know when he stopped seeing it or if even, he ever really did. Maybe he needed to have his little people to point it out to, so he could see it. And that is what I mean by him being a contradiction.

My Dad once told me when I was fussing about leaving the family car unlocked outside our home.

“Trust the world and the world will trust you.” About two weeks later his car got stolen, and bizarrely I think it was locked at the time.

I’m still useless about locking my truck, so for some reason his words had more effect on me than the action of some stupid car thieving Pratt.

He told me, “The world is good, the world is your friend. Take your life in both hands, live it, live it too the full, you can do anything, as long as your dare to believe.”

He will read this, his bushy eyebrows may twitch in surprise, “me, did I say that? Oh what a fool I was.”

No dad I think you were correct. I think despite everything, despite how hard life is. I think you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, but you have to surrender to the currents that draw you along. That are stronger than you, and when they wash you up you look around and think, ‘Ahh of course, this is where I wanted to be, I was heading over there, but look, look this is right. And think of what I’ve learnt on the way.’

The sadness of my Dad is I think he has surrendered his life for us. He has gone to work day in, day out, in a job he hates to provide for his family. I think it has slowly ground him down. I hope, no, I pray he still looks at a beautiful golden sunrise and thinks, “my, isn’t that something. Maybe, just maybe it is all a bit magic.”

I am making him sound like a sad man, which he isn’t he is brilliant, funny and magic. I just think his head hurts. And I think the other reason for this is his brain.

Now, I understand my Dad’s brain because mine is made out the same template, but luckily mine has got some marshmallow bit’s stuck on there from Mum, so mine isn’t quite so painfully sharp. Dad’s brain in an engineering master piece this is definitely one that God made not Rory. He is a genius, now I know I am biased as he is my Dad but ask anyone, he is an amazingly clever man. But Dad’s brain is logical. If he reads a sign that doesn’t make sense his brain will flash up, ‘Error, Error, malfunction, can not process.’ Anyone else would read the sign and get the gist of it even if actually it was written incorrectly.

And this is the problem, the world doesn’t make sense.

So my Dad’s brilliant logical brain, is trying to compute this weird, unfair, confusing world. It can’t do it, there is no equation which you can figure out and go, “Oh of course its E + 64 �" the square root of 2977397498”. So I think Dad’s brain is in overload.

Now the thing with my Dad is he does ‘get it’ he just thinks about it too much. I think he is a pretty old soul but not an ancient one yet. He, more than anyone I know, feels the world around him. He’s just got to stop trying to make sense of it.

What would really help my Dad, (although I would never tell him to his face, but here squished in amongst all these words, I feel I can slip it in) would be a nice big spliff every evening. Now I can see the look of horror on both my parent’s faces, so for the record, no I don’t take drugs, I have never taken drugs and I never plan on taking drugs . But you don’t get to 33 having been to parties, raves and festivals and lived in Cornwall which prides itself with being full of free thinking individuals, without meeting tons of people that do take drugs.

And this is what I’m thinking. Dad would come home from work, change out of his work clothes and have the dinner of fresh produce cooked lovingly by his wife that adores him. Now, his brain hurts from a day of trying to make sense of a world that just doesn’t make sense. Once they’ve washed up together and it’s got dark. Just before bed, he would slip outside, into the beautiful fragrant garden that my Mum has created. It would be quiet, just those lovely night sounds, maybe an owl calling. Some bats will dart over head. In the summer he will be barefoot, the cool delicious grass between his toes. The winter will find him in a hat and scarf which have been knitted by that adoring wife like this, knit one, pearl one, add a bit of love to keep my soul mate warm, because that’s how she knits things for him.  (And yes there is no doubt at all that they are soul mates). Anyway I’m deviating again. He will sink back on a wooden bench. Draw out his little box of tobacco, weed and papers and roll himself a massive humdinger spliff.

And there he will sit, watching the stars, slowly smoking that massive spliff. Until his aches and pains fade, and his brain stops trying to compute the un-computable. And then he will just enjoy the magic of the world for a while. Then he will go upstairs to bed and sleep deeply and soundly all night long because his brain has just been dimmed down a little. Morning you will find him a little more sprightly, a little more hopeful from having a good nights sleep, and a little rest from his brain.

Dad will believe in me and my sisters until his dying breath, he believes without doubt that we are all amazing, talented and beautiful. We laugh at him for this. But it’s good, so good, that someone has that much belief in me. I will strive to make something of my life long after everyone else has packed up and gone home. Just to prove him right, just to prove his belief was founded. Thank- you Dad, you are always my inspiration.

Oh yes and just a quick after thought for Dad alone, I’m sorry I didn’t go to university.

Oh and another, I’m sorry I buggered off to Cornwall and took middle sister with me. I know it has made your life even more difficult.

CHAPTER 5

 YOU CAN DIE TWICE : PART 2

Sorry, didn’t mean to split this day up into two parts but  I just couldn’t do it all in one go. So where were we, oh yes the Dad’s. Actually go back at bit I’ve missed something. Actually, I’ve missed one thing and one person.

Right the thing. Why do you say stupid stuff? Why in this life altering situation did I say this. Let’s set the scene first. Before all the family arrived husband and I left the really hot room for a bit. He wanted to move the red car and have a f*g. Now he didn’t smoke near me when I was pregnant, and certainly never smoked anywhere near our little boy, in fact he had cut right down, but times like this are not the time to give up smoking. The infant Intensive Care Unit is inside the maternity wing of the hospital. So we walk out into the brilliant sunshine, but we have to pick our way through all the eight month pregnant, 16 year old girls who are out the front having a f*g. I’m sorry but is there no justice in the world? We close our eyes and run through them. We are walking up to find the red car when my family drives past which is a stroke of luck considering the hospital is massive. They just stop in the middle of the road and run to me. Husband goes on to find the red car.

My family are brilliant, I think I have the best family in the world. They all sort of hug me at once, this big group hug thing in the middle of the road. So what do I say? Do I say, ‘I’m so glad your here, thank you for coming?’ Do I tell them what is going on? Do I break down and wail and tell them my son is dead.

No, I say, “Why do these things always happen to me? I had a ride in a helicopter Dad.” (Dad likes all things that fly). Like I said, what a stupid thing to say.

The other thing I missed out earlier is Lauren, actually let’s give her, her own little bit. I think she deserves it.

Lauren

Okay, now I don’t know how old Lauren is I’m thinking around twenty, give or take. Now last night Lauren probably went out clubbing with her girl friends. Maybe they were out on the pull. Maybe not. Maybe she is going steady with a handsome boyfriend called Tim, I don’t know. But she probably had one too many Tequilas and got in late. Now her alarm went off this morning and she rolled out of bed and thought, ‘Oh I had one too many Tequilas last night.’

But she got to work on time, she is conscientious like that. She might have walked to work thinking, ‘I wander what today will bring.’ I tell you what today brought her, it brought her my little hell. Lauren works in the infant ICU. Her job for the day was to stand with us in that hot room. I think she must have had to stay there in case our son decided he had had enough before they wanted him too. Anyway she spent the entire day in there, like some hostess at a sick party. All she could say was, “can I get you anything? Some water? Some tea? Would you like to hold him? I’m sorry it’s so hot we aren’t allowed to open the window. Your doing really well, well done you are very brave”

I love her, I think she is brilliant. I couldn’t do that job and I am a fair bit older than her. Shall I tell you why I love her? She must do that job more times than any of us would ever want to believe is possible. She must deal with babies dying a lot. When my son died for a second time (more on that later), Lauren cried, she really cried. I love her so much, for caring so much. Thank you Lauren. I wouldn’t do your job for all the money in the world. I am so glad you were not some crass tough lady.

There are some brilliant people in the world, and Lauren is one of them.

Anyway, let’s get on and get it over with. Everybody is in the hot room and everybody has said their hello’s and goodbye’s to our son. Husband and I go back outside for some air. We fight our way back through the heavily pregnant adolescent smokers again and have this random conversation.

“Shall we pull the ventilator and let him go?”

“I can’t see much point in hanging on any longer.”

“Okay”

“Right.”

So we hold hands and go back in. I don’t think I have let go of his hand since.

Now you see, we can say a lot between us without any words, but sometimes you need something a bit more physical to back it up. Holding hands say’s, ‘it’s okay, I’m here, I know, I know, I feel it too. Come on we can do it together, it makes us twice as strong.’ And all that flows both ways.

My husband has brilliant hands. He isn’t a big bloke at all. He is actually pretty little, he is ‘lithe’ I guess, sort of strong and sinewy. Goodness don’t I make him sound attractive. Anyway there are two really big things about my Husband, (please drag your thoughts out the gutter, I’m not talking about that.) He has a great big smile (normally, it’s taking a while to come back), and massive hands. They are interesting shapes, he has a arthritic condition so all his joints are much bigger than they should be.  When we got married I asked if he wanted a ring, he looked at his hands and pointed out, that if he had a ring, it would look like one of those rings racing pigeons have on their legs. He was right it would. Anyway I love his big, gentle, odd shaped hands, they can make anything, mend anything and keep me safe. If we put our hands together, palm to palm with the bases level, my fingers tips just about come up to the base of his fingers.

Anyway, I tuck my little hand inside his big hand and we go back in.

We decide to do it on our own. So the family file out. And I hold my baby one last time. Husband puts his arm around us. They take out the ventilator and we watch him go. Having gone so quickly this morning, now he is in no hurry. Eventually they tell us he has no heart beat and he has gone, properly this time, this time it is forever.

We sit with him for a while as he gets paler and paler. Then I can’t sit there anymore, so I pass him to Lauren and say to him, “I love you, I love you so much, I’m sorry you couldn’t stay, I am so proud of you. Go with this nice lady now, she will look after you.”

Lauren takes him, she is crying, properly crying, thank you Lauren, thank you for your tears, you will never know how much they meant to me.

CHAPTER 6

THE OLD SOUL THEORY

Right okay, my soul theory. You have probably noticed by know that I keep banging on about souls and soul mates. Now I must say even I am beginning to find the whole soul mate thing a bit nauseating but I believe it is true.

What’s the difference between something which is alive and something which is dead? Go on tell me that. Okay, okay, I hear you with all your medical explanations I am not talking about heart beats and brain functions. I’m talking about that sublime yet obvious difference.

Okay example, let’s use the obvious one although it pains me to do it. My little boy. What made me pick him up? And think oh s**t, is he dead? Now I know I’ve already said my brain was saying, ‘Don’t be daft you paranoid first time mother, he’s just sleeping. But something else said, ‘pick him up, check him, he’s not okay.’ Something changed, I was watching him sleep. He made no noise as he slept, he was still when he slept. Nothing physically changed but something massive did change. Now going on how fast he then went blue before we could get an airway, I would guess I knew the instant my little boy went, and he never came back, not in the hospital, not once they got a heartbeat.

So I say his soul went.

You can walk across a field and look at a flock of sheep two will be lying in exactly the same position and if you listen to your heart (or soul) it is obvious which one is alive and which is dead. Your brain will be clanging around confusing you, their both dead, look they both look the same. 

 Or they are alive, they have to be alive, I think it’s ear moved.

It is your soul which makes you, you. It is that little bit inside you which makes every living thing individual.

So this is how my old soul theory works. Every soul is alive for a finite about of time or possibly until it has reached a certain point in its development. So when someone gets old and dies the soul goes on, into someone new. We have all met someone and thought, have we met already? Or I like you, I just know I like you. What’s to say you haven’t been friends in a previous life?

So the souls go round and round. Sometimes they take quite a long time to leave the old body, they hang on, lingering in the hospitals because the souls themselves are still fit and healthy it’s just the body that’s worn out. Now other times, people (animals too), go out of sequence when it’s not their turn. Normally they go quite fast, none of this thrashing and lingering. Those are the old souls who have reached the end. They are quietly slipping off to wherever they go next. They won’t be recycled, they won’t go round again. They are done with this world. Have you ever noticed it’s normally the best people that go to early? That’s because their soul has reached maturity, they are at peace with the world. This happens anywhere in the life cycle not necessarily at the end. My boy was 28 hours old when his time was up, but I can say without any shadow of doubt he had an ancient soul, he was peaceful, composed, completely at ease with the world.

There’s nothing wrong with people with new souls, they are fresh, invigorating, they like to challenge everything, they are often the most fun to be with. Think of the young souls as saplings, racing up towards the light, enthusiastic, eager.

The old soul is like an old oak tree. Strong, wise, it has seen it all before, it knows its place in the world and it is happy there. Its roots are deep and well spread, you are not going to bowl over the oak.

You can normally spot the new souls fairly easily. They are normally searching for who they are, looking for answers, trying out all the options.  The old souls are the peaceful people.

This brings me on to the testing of the soul theory. I think the first time round God (or whoever), says ’right test one, beginner soul, your test is too get through this life and not completely mess it up.” (Think of the girls smoking f**s outside maternity wing, their babies won’t die because they are only first time souls. So they are making a few mistakes and getting away with it.)

To the intermediate souls he says, “okay, you know the ropes, I’m going to chuck a few troubles your way if you cope with those, you can move up to advanced level.

The advanced souls get it all. If they pass, like Dad’s mother did. They go on to wherever is next. I’m hoping it’s pretty damn good because this testing is a very tough way of sorting the men from the boys.

 CHAPTER 6

HIT BY A BUS

Okay, maybe not actually hit by a bus, but it feels like it, probably hit by a bus and then reversed over for good measure. So by some miracle you manage to scrap yourself off the floor and stand there saying, “what, who, why?”

That’s how we felt.

Now they are trained in these units to look after bereaved parents. There is loads of stuff they ask you all of which we thought, ‘no, God no’. They say, “would you like to bath him? Would you like to stay in a room with him overnight?”

No. I don’t. We don’t. What we want to do is get the hell out of there as fast as we can. Now I am not knocking this, please don’t think I am, some people want to do these things, some people this really helps, just not us.

So we leave, pretty quick. Really the only thing which would help would be to bring him with us. To take him home and bury him under the apple tree on this beautiful summer’s evening. We would cry (a lot) we would say our goodbyes and it would be over.

You can’t do that. Oh no, not in this world we live in.

So we leave, meet all the family in the car park, God knows where they have been while we have been watching our son die for a second time. We say goodbye to them, get in the red car and drive away.  We are still holding hands I think we hold hands all the way home. I have no idea how Husband kept the red car on the road.

We get home and move all his stuff out of the bedroom we can’t look at it. The worst thing, the very worst thing is the teddy bear my Mum knitted him. It makes me physically sick to look at it. Don’t get me wrong it’s a brilliant bear. But I imagine her, on those long winter evenings when we first knew our son was on his way. I imagine her in her pretty, tidy front room, maybe the open fire is lit, maybe dad is watching something on TV, something his brilliant brain understands. Something my Mum’s brain can’t even be bothered to think about. But she sits with him in companionable silence. The drone from the TV and the happy clicking of her needles. ‘Knit one, pearl one, add a bit of love to keep my new Grandchild warm’. All that love, all that hope, all those dreams, poured into that bear. When eventually we get to lay our son to rest the bear goes with him, that bear will keep him warm wherever his journey takes him, love is the best thing to keep you warm.

Enough, enough, I can’t see the keyboard for the tears. I’m going to have a cup of tea and hoover the floor. I’ll see you later.

Right, here I am back. Armed with a streaming cup of tea. Floors hoovered and washed. 

Determined I will finish telling you about this day before I go to work. Then later, if I get time I get to tell you about Mum which will be a whole lot more fun.

So we are at home. Now physically I have just about had it, (don’t forget it was only yesterday I gave birth and I have done lots of sprinting about for someone in that condition). So I sit on our hideous 70’s sofa which I have always hated and is at least 4^th hand, but hey it’s a damn site better than no sofa. The only good thing about it is that the Big Eared Dog chewed a hole in one of the arms when she was a puppy and it is the perfect size and shape for the TV remote. Clever Dog. Look I’m deviating again. I was going to tell you about Husband trying to kill the black cat. We have a bit if an animal collection so Husband goes to feed the rabbits. The animals get it, they really get it. The Collie lies by my feet, the Big Eared Dog lies on the sofa with her head on my lap and her ears sideways. There’s none of the usual, how come you get to be on the sofa and I’m down here stuff, they just lie there going, ‘it’s okay Mum, we’ve got you, we get it, we’ll look after you.’ My dogs are fab.

We have two kittens (actually they are nearly four years old, but they will always be ’the kittens’). They are there too. One on the back of the sofa sort of curled around my neck and one squashed up in my lap, snuggled between the Big Eared Dog’s big ears.  None of the usual going round, and round, and round, and then stick their bum in your face. Animals understand it all so much better than we do.

The black cat doesn’t get. He is following Husband around the garden whingeing. I honestly think he has the feline version of Tourettes . He is really annoying at the best of times. So Husband loses it, and comes across the garden, trying to catch it, shouting something like, “If I catch you, I’m going to rip off you head and s**t down your neck.”  Black cat still doesn’t get it. But he does f**k off for the rest of the evening.

See, there are some times in life when a cat going, “F**k, s**t, arsehole” endlessly will make you lose the plot.

Anyway Husband and I sit on the hideous 70’s sofa and hold hands. The animals, (except the Black Cat) sit round us holding us up. Big Sister comes and feeds us soup.

Phone rings, it’s Best Mate. Now obviously Best Mate knows I’ve had our baby as she is my Best Mate and therefore was one of the first people I rang on the morning of the perfect day. Best Mate doesn’t know what has happened today. I answer the phone, “Hi” or possibly “Hello” I can’t remember which.

Best Mate : “Oh F**k what’s happened.”

That’s why she is my Best Mate, because that was all I had to say.

CHAPTER 7

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 2 :

MUM

Mum’s Mum

Well Dad’s Mum came barging in a demanded a bit so I have to be fair.  Mum’s Mum had her own tragedy as well. Her own mother died soon after giving birth to her and so she grew up in an orphanage, because I think in those days, Dad’s simply didn’t raise children on their own. Well not little tiny babies anyway.

She didn’t speak of it much, not to us grand children anyway. We did hear exciting stories about them stealing over ripe bananas. In our heads it was fun, like something out of a children’s film. But for her it was real, the reality of having a family but being left, given away, not cared enough about for someone to fight for. I know it was the norm, I am not saying her father was a bad man for leaving her. It’s just so sad when you think about it. What’s possibly even sadder is she was the first girl her mother had. There were three older brothers. I imagine that pretty young woman, my great grandmother, propped on pillows exhausted but elated. Her new, pink, tiny, baby in her arms.

“At last, a little girl, a friend for me, how pretty she is.”

Do you think she rolled those names she had chosen, over in her mind? “Which shall it be? She is so pretty, so wanted, so special, I must get the name right.”

And then disaster.

All her life she carried that rejection with her. But she was, herself, a fantastic mother. She loved and cared for her girls. She filled them up with love. She wasn’t bitter or twisted at her stolen childhood. But at the very end of her life it started to spill out, maybe she was just too tired to carry it any more. Perhaps all those years it was in there and she carried it alone, and it got heavier and heavier and in the end it began to spill, to slop over the edges.

The greatest thing about her, when I think about her is this. That woman could laugh, she was quick to laugh and laughed long and hard. What a gift, what an amazing gift. I have a photo of her and myself hanging in my kitchen, it was taken a week or so before she became so ill, so ill they should have smoothed her worried brow and helped her along the way. “Off you go now, your time is up, go and find that man you love, and if your soul is coming round again, I wish it an easier journey next time.”

But no it doesn’t work like that does it? They make you keep fighting even when all hope is gone. But I am getting side tracked again. The photo. Her mind was a little muddled, all that heavy weight was seeping into it. But we are laughing, both of us laughing, I remember her turning to me and wiping a happy tear from her eye, “I don’t even know why, I’m laughing?” She said.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t know why, it matters that you always knew how to. What an amazing person.

Mum

It never rained when in my childhood.

Well actually that’s not strictly true. Sometimes it thundered, great cracks of light opening up the sky followed by that low threatening rumble.  But we weren’t threatened, my sisters and I, weren’t even the tiniest of bits scared. We would rush behind the sofa and wait for the rumble. But it was a game, just a game. We would count the seconds between that great flash of light and the rumbling bellow to find out how far away it was. It was brilliant, a great game. It would never hurt us, why would it hurt us? Mum was there.

She was probably in the kitchen, humming softly to herself while preparing dinner. She would be laughing at us, joining the game.

It snowed too. It snowed in my childhood. That soft silence which covers the world. Every child’s dream. We would awake in our warm little house and look out at this new world. Rush down stairs excited, no, overwhelmed at this unexpected treat. A day off from school and this beautiful snow.

Mum was never too busy. She never said. “No, sorry girls, we can’t play in the snow I have to fix my hair, or I have to go to work, or I have to clean the house.”

She just dressed us up warm and took us out to gallop and frolic in the snow.

Oh yes, it did rain, I lie. It rained so hard the football field flooded and she took me down there to sail my model boat. What fun, what brilliant fun.

It was sunny, very sunny in my childhood. There was bike rides, picnics, swing ball, paddling in the river, I could go on forever.

But never, ever, one single, boring, rainy, grey day.

See how great my Mum is.

Now I didn’t get back to writing this yesterday. I knew I wouldn’t, days just get filled up somehow don’t they? But it gave me all this time to think of what to write about my Mum and I couldn’t decide how to start it. I’m glad I started with that, because that is really who she is, that is what makes her tick.

Please don’t now picture this little mumsy figure who lives for her children and has a marshmallow brain. She is intelligent, educated, poised, she could create a garden paradise in a parking lot, and rustle a meal from a lettuce leaf and a walnut. She could quote you a sonnet and write you a poem. She could argue a political point and discuss a scientific issue.

Those are all parts of her. But she, her very core is this big ball of love.

Her grandchildren (my son never got the chance and that just kills me), like to lie on her. They say, “Grandma, you are soft, so soft”

And it’s true. I really can’t work out how she is so soft. She is not fat, far from it, she digs, cycles, jumps up and down with little people, so she is pretty fit.

I think it’s because God coated her is something different from everyone else. I think when God was making her his hand shook a bit, you know, just that old age shake. It shook at the moment he was pouring in the love. His brow creases a little.

“Oh my, now look what I’ve gone and done. This one has got so much love it’s overflowing, I can’t varnish this one, it will over heat with love and combust”.

So he puts her to one side for a minute and goes to Heaven’s workshop for a rummage around. It takes quite a while to find what he is looking for and in doing so he gets a couple of cobwebs stuck on his big bushy eyebrows. (All the best men have big bushy eyebrows.) He doesn’t notice and Rory sniggers a little. But he finds what he is looking for. It is a magic covering, it is soft, softer than cotton wool, probably some by-product from cloud manufacture and it’s porous to let the love flow.

For this reason the world shouldn’t throw bad things at my Mum, she has no varnish to protect her. I’m pretty sure I’ve got two layers. I think Rory was varnishing me. I think God looked over.

“Best put two coats on that one, boy, it’s going to have to have a rough ride.”

But Mum doesn’t even have one layer, she just has the soft permeable magic. So the bad gets right in, wounds her right to the core. She will always come back, because that love will gradually work away at the hurt, fill it up and push it back out. This is why hugging my Mum was so very hard for the first little while after I went to Hell. She was full up with grief, it was overwhelming her, it was all flowing over the edges. She was trying so hard to say and do all the right things. She did say and do all the right things. But then you hugged her and all this grief came pouring out because there was no varnish there. It was like being wrapped in grief.

It’s okay now, it’s like being wrapped in soft warm love again.

Oh yes, before we finish. My Mum is one of my greatest friends

CHAPTER 8

THE AFTERMATH

I couldn’t work out how to do this, I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it. Originally you see, I was just going to let it all come out chronologically, take you through from beginning to end. But I changed my mind. It’s too heavy, it’s too laborious. You don’t want to hear about all of it, it would be like slowly drowning in mud.

But things need saying, so I’ll chop them all up into little bits, bunch them all together. This is the, what happened next bit which doesn’t really go anywhere else.

Nothing.

Really. Nothing happened next. Husband and I sat on the hideous 70’s sofa holding hands. We sat there for what seems like a lifetime. Just sitting, holding hands, not even really saying anything. Our family’s fed us, popping in with casseroles, lasagnes, pies, pasta. They would bustle around in the kitchen and present us with a dinner. We would eat it because we were told to. I went back to work, I went back as quickly as I could because I couldn’t bear doing nothing all day. I think I started work again three days after he died.

You see, I bet your thinking. ‘They are so lucky to have family so close by, to pop in and make them dinner.’

No, not all our family are close by. My Big Sister and Mum and Dad are 218 miles away but they popped by and made us dinner because they are totally fantastic. I honestly don’t think I cooked for about three weeks.

Husband dug the garden. Great swaths of mud like an emerging scar. I fed the animals, cleaned out the rabbits, fussed over the horses. People came and went.

The rest of the time we sat on the hideous sofa holding hands, sometimes we would be surprised to find tears coursing down our faces, unwanted, uninvited. The dogs were with us constantly, quietly waiting out the storm with us. We clutched hold of each other’s hands because we were too scared to let go, in case we blew away.

CHAPTER 9

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBERS 3 & 4 :

BIG SISTER AND MIDDLE SISTER

You see they have to be together, who could I put first? I met them both together I am sure. I am sure my parents took me home and introduced me.

“These are your two big sisters.”

Or they could have said,

“These are your two best friends, your allies in life. They will look after you. You can turn to them whenever you are in trouble and they will always help you.”

Either would have been correct.

Big Sister

They can share a chapter but they can’t share the things I have got to say about them. They are too different, as different as the wind from the sun. So we will start with Big Sister, that will please her, and anyway she is the eldest so it seems only right.

She is my Big Sister in everything but stature, in that she is tiny. I don’t know, probably 4’9”, I’ve never even asked her. She is the most organised person in the world. When she was about twelve she wrote a time plan for her life. I never got to see it, it’s not the sort of thing you let your annoying little sister read. But as far as I know she hasn’t deviated from it. I think she may have had to change the man she was going to marry from George Michael to her husband, but I’m sure the time and the date of the wedding were still correct. She has two teenage daughters now, I think they were born on the correct dates as well.

She is like me in a lot of ways, we don’t like things being sprung on us, sudden surprises, changes in our plans. We like to write it all down and tick it off. She likes to be in charge (that’s because she is the Big Sister). She is the one person I know who has really changed throughout their life. She might read this and say, ‘No, I’ve always been me, you just didn’t see it.’

So she is probably right, she would know, she is the only one that would know. I just mean '......'

Oh, let’s go back to the beginning and see if I can explain it better that way.

Big Sister is sitting in our Mum’s womb she is happy and comfortable, she’s probably curled up reading a book with her pyjamas on. What she doesn’t know is that in the outside world it has been decided that it is time she came out.

That isn’t on Big Sister’s list, she hasn’t got that marked in until two days time. She needs to finish reading her book. But you try telling that to the midwife. So Mum is induced. Big Sister is very, very cross.

In the outside world, they can’t work out what’s going on. The induced labour is fine, the contractions are strong, Mum is pushing well. But this baby is stuck it’s just not coming out.

Eventually they drag her out with forceps. Big Sister is absolutely furious, even the midwife admits she has never seen a baby so cross. But it wasn’t on Big Sisters time plan, so what did they expect? She never even got to finish her book. I honestly think that was the only time in her whole life, when anyone has ever, really made Big Sister do something she was absolutely set against.

Growing up she was always my Big Sister always there to look after me, always watching over me. I think being a teenager was hard. I think she needed control, she needed to be in charge of her own life, to write the time plan and live by it.

Then she was an adult, her own family, her own house, her own work and life. Finally she was in charge, suddenly she was this whole new person, confident and glowing.

I don’t know, I might be wrong. You can ask her if you ever meet her. She’ll tell you and she will tell you straight.

Now I’ve had to come back and add this bit in. I was thinking about this chapter which I wrote yesterday and I kept thinking, it’s not right, it’s not complete I’ve missed something important out. Of course I had, Dad’s Mum, she’s missing. She is massively important in Big Sister’s life. Mum and Big Sister are great friend’s really great friends, but sometimes they see things differently. It makes myself and Middle Sister laugh. If you ring one up after the other, for an account of a conversation they have had, you will get two totally different stories. Neither is lying it’s just that sometimes Big Sister is on FM and Mum is on AM.

Dad’s Mum was always on the same frequency as Big Sister. Big Sister was definitely her special one out of the three of us, which is fine, it is good, it was never a problem. Middle Sister and I would be too busy climbing the apple tree to even notice. So all through those difficult teenage years, when Big Sister was trying to figure it all out. Dad’s Mum was there, Mum was there too I’m not saying she wasn’t, it’s just that Dad’s Mum knew the frequency. And then Dad’s Mum upped and left, no warning, no long waving goodbye, just a brief flick of her wrist and then she was gone.

I remember that evening so well. I think it was the first time we had been really old enough to understand the pain when someone died. I remember Middle Sister and I holding each other and crying.  For some reason we had ice creams in our hands and they were melting, running down our wrists. I was gutted, stunned by the finality of death, upset for my Dad, obviously sad for the amazing lady who had gone. But I don’t think I got it in the same way that Big Sister did. She was wounded, punched to the ground by what she had lost. She grew up a bit that day, she took an extra step in life, a difficult step, a horrible step. One that Middle Sister and I got to wait a lot longer before taking.

God made Big Sister with an enquiring mind. When we were little she would say, “Why does the earth go round the sun?”

Middle Sister and I would raise our eyes and scarper. Dad would get an orange and an apple out of the fruit bowl. Maybe that old walnut from the bottom would come out as well, to play the part of the moon. And so would begin the long explanation. She still analysis stuff now. She is a great person for debates and discussions. I ring her for a quick chat and suddenly three hours have gone discussing the state of the world.

And this is weird, we can’t stop ourselves. When I went to Hell I would ring her, I didn’t want to discuss stuff, analyse how I was feeling. But I would hear her voice and that was it, we would be talking, probing trying to figure it out. I would come off the phone exhausted, emotional, but you know what? I think it was one of the best things for me.

I spoke to someone the other day. They are having counselling twenty years after losing someone they loved. They said, “it hurts, it’s like having a scab lifted off, and going back into that wound again, scraping right to the bottom of it, getting it clean. Then hopefully it will heal properly this time. Before I had let it close with dirt in it, it festered and rotted.”

See, that’s what Big Sister did for me. She helped me clean that wound, sometimes it stung, but she did a good job, it will heal well because Big Sister helped me.

Middle Sister

Ha Ha, look at me, I really have sneaked two nice fun chapters in here, without venturing back to Hell.

“A friend is someone who dances with you in the sunlight and walks beside you in the shadows.”

 I don’t know who’s quote that is, but they could have written it especially for Middle Sister. All my life she has been there, from playing Morris dancing in the garden (God, knows why) to crawling home late from the pub. We have laughed, we have cried and we have lived our lives together. Every one of my childhood memories has her in it. She is the only one of the family who now lives anywhere near me, but then looking at it now, of course she would. It makes sense, we were always going to go and explore someplace new together. And it would be Cornwall, because our Dad showed us the magic which was there. The rugged cliffs, the crashing waves, the sweet clean air and those dark black nights when the stars light up sky.

What to tell you about Middle Sister? I don’t know what to include and what to leave out.

I can tell you she was naughty, well still is. I can tell you when she was banned from dying her hair as an adolescent she did anyway. But she brought the wrong dye and it ended up green, like a mass of seaweed. Of course I had helped her dye it, I was always there in the background letting her be the star and staying a little bit safer. Like the time she pierced her nose in the toilets at school and sent me home with a note for Mum (who thought it was a joke).

Every page you turn in the family album there she is, different hair, different clothes. Gothic, Grunge, Indie she has been it all, tried it all. I could just follow along, laugh a bit, pick up the bits that worked for me and leave the bits that didn’t. I didn’t have to experiment she did enough for the three of us.

She wears her heart on her sleeve. What was it my Dad said about her? That’s it, ‘Sunshine and showers.’ He hit the nail on the head. She can be up, then down, then up again in the space of an hour.

I would say Middle Sister is quite a young soul. And this is what I mean about young souls often being the best types of people, not all young souls are adolescent, pregnant, chain smokers. They are often artists, explorers and scientists they are eager to learn and question the world around them. I would be fairly sure I have an old soul, I have no desire to travel and see the world, I don’t need to ‘find myself’, I am already there. I think when I walk into a room I bring a little peace, a little bit of calm. Middle Sister is the opposite she has travelled the world and she would still like to see more. When she walks into a room it lights up, she brings energy, excitement, fun, light and laughter, she is one of my very favourite people to be with. Middle Sister and I are two halves of the same, she is the ying to my yang, the light to my shade, the music

to my silence. As a family we wait for her (often, her time keeping can be interesting) the other four of us, happy in each others company, easy, quiet, but there is always something missing. She enters the room and immediately fills it, she lifts each one of use, entertains and carries us.

If someone had said to me, “who do you want in a crisis?”

I would have said, “not Middle Sister, she is too emotional, it will bend her, break her.

I was wrong, I was so very wrong. She has been my shining light guiding me from Hell. She has never buckled, never shown the strain. I know it must have been a heavy burden for her but she has carried it with grace.

She knows me better than I know myself. If I have a bad day the phone will ring.

“You okay? I can feel you are having a bad one.”

She gets it, she gets me. I was so wrong to have doubted her strength.

CHAPTER 10

HUGS

‘When troubles come they came not in single spies but in battalions.’

A whole chapter on hugs, how about that? That is because I have experienced more hugs on this road from Hell than I ever knew possible. I have been pressed against massive floppy breasts, squeezed against tight torsos and embraced in mounds of flesh.

Brilliant, I love it.

I have been hugged by so many strangers. People come up to me in the street and put their arms around me and say, “I know, I am so sorry.”

Then they just go, walk away, leaving me smelling slightly of their deodorant and just the lingering warmth of their bodies. I think physical contact is an amazing thing. It says so much more than words ever could, like the whole holding hand thing with Husband.  Don’t get me wrong I am not a physical sort of person at all. Normally even hugging my Best Mate would be a bit weird. But recently I’ve appreciated those hugs, it’s as if they leave a little bit of themselves, a bit of love, I can add it to the collection I am making inside me. There’s a big hole that’s been ripped out of me. One by one I’m collecting all these little bits of love and patching that hole up.

I need to say something about my community because really that’s where most of these hugging strangers come from. I live in a little village. Well actually, I live about two miles outside the village, but in a rural community like ours that still counts as being part of the gang. It is a friendly little place. It is like any village, in that there is a fair bit of gossip. You can’t do anything without being talked about and to be honest if no one is doing anything worth talking about, somebody will just make something up and round it goes. But when thing’s go wrong the whole village closes rank behind you. They all say, “Yep, your one of ours, we will look after you, we will look out for you.”

Here’s a little anecdote about village life and why I like it so much. Shortly after I went to Hell the postman pulled up outside Husband’s workshop, which is at the opposite end of the village to where we live. He gets out, smiles and says to Husband, “I have a catalogue here for your missus. I wasn’t sure what to do with it.”

Husband wipes his oily hands on his already filthy jeans, “Oh, why, what is it?”

“Mothercare.”

“Find a bin on your way through the village and chuck it.”

“Yep no worries, thought you might say that.”

See, I’m saved one little Hell, one lurching moment of grief by the kindness of a man who hardly knows me. That is why if your planning on having a s**t time, I would advise you move really fast to a fab little Cornish village.

But my little Cornish village has had a battering of bad luck. I kept thinking, ‘No, I’m just extra sensitive to it at the moment’.

But it is defiantly having a bad time. I know of so many deaths this summer, which have come far before they are due. Cancers in young people, strange accidents, everywhere you turn is tragedy. We all cling together wintering the storm. I think maybe this how it works, luck is like a cloud, some clouds are white and fluffy carrying good things. But some are dark and sinister bringing nothing but despair, and at the moment it a big grey one which is stuck over our village. We need a good brisk westerly wind to move it on.

Oh yes and just quickly, all those hugs. You know that point when you are pressed against someone’s chest and you should be thinking, feeling, their love. Not me, I’m too busy assessing the hug. Middle sister and I used to assess all the public toilets we went in.

“I give in eight out of ten for cleanliness, four out of ten for the hand drier.”

So all this time, all those hugs, and bad old me is just thinking, supple arms, nice torso, a bit sloppy on the release though.

'So I am going to give the award out here, the best hugger in North Cornwall goes to Husband's Brother. Just perfect, big and strong, nice height, good action. Well done, congratulations.

CHAPTER 11

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 5 :

THE EX HUSBAND

Ha, ha, I heard it. You tried to cover it up but I heard that sharp little intake of breath. That, “Ex Husband? But I thought you were happily married to Soul Mate”.

I am happily married to Soul Mate. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be an Ex Husband. Now really, in this story he only plays a tiny part. But in my life he has played a massive part so he gets to be in the cast. He has taught me so much, the things we learnt together, and the things I learnt tearing apart from him taught me even more.

So I will tell you the whole story.

I blame some of my first marriage on my parent’s marriage, not on my parents you understand, just on their fairytale marriage. They met young, fell in love, got married, had children. They love each other a little bit more everyday. Mum still has that schoolgirl crush on Dad, when his blue Skoda comes round the corner at the end of a day at work, her checks flush and her heart beats a bit faster. It is exactly the same as it was when they first met and Dad used to swoop up her driveway on his motorbike. Well okay it’s not exactly the same, the mode of transport has changed but you get my meaning.

The second thing I blame my first marriage on is all the true love cynics. All those people who say, “No marriage is perfect, everybody always has there doubts. You have to work at it every day”. And so on and so on.

So I meet Ex Husband. He is my first proper boyfriend. I’d had some young teenage boyfriends but this is the first real thing. He is good looking, intelligent, a bit older, works in a bar, and a bit of a ‘bad boy’. We have a damn fine time. We go out, we drink, we dance, we meet people, we learn all a lot about the world around us and we learn tons about ourselves and we have great fun doing it. He is a brilliant, brilliant friend.

We get married, young, everybody sort of tutted and whispered. “Your a bit young, go and live, see the world, look around a bit.”

We think, we can still do all those things when we are married, we’re right, your wrong. (Like I say, we were young and foolish.)

I had this nagging feeling in the bottom of my heart, it said, “this isn’t it, there’s more, this isn’t true love.”

The cynics are everywhere, “true love doesn’t exist, etc, etc.”

I look at my parent’s fairytale marriage, and think, ‘that’s what happens, you meet, fall in love and live happily ever after. It happened to them it will happen to me.’

We lasted ten years and to be completely honest if we had, had a little bit of luck we would probably still be together now. And it wouldn’t be a bad marriage it would be a whole lot better than a lot of other marriages. We were friends, we loved each other and we respected each other. We had a huge amount of fun. But he wasn’t ‘the one’.

We never had much luck but I think it was the week of terrible luck when the big crack came. This was our week:

Monday : Cat get’s run over, leaving us to hand rear her four, five day old kittens.

Tuesday : One of the horses develops terrible foot abscess, vet tells me I will have to shoot it. (I don’t, by the way and it did survive.)

Wednesday : Ex Husband’s computer breaks, completely and utterly. He uses it to work from home. We have no money to buy another.

Thursday : Another of the horses has some weird and wonderful allergic reaction. Vet tells me it will “most probably die”. (Again it didn’t he is still fine to this day.)

Friday : Our landlord dies. Meaning we will lose our house and my business premises, from which I run a livery yard.

That’s it, it was only five days, just the working week not the whole calendar week. In the whole grand scheme of things none of those things were too bad, but it was all just a bit crap. But it made what was already hard, even harder. We moved house, moved the business, as I said both horses survived. The kittens made it. But it took Ex Husband a long time to get another job, by which time he had filled the void with some on-line computer game. Looking at it with the benefit of hindsight he had also filled the void in our relationship with that bloody game as well. I always blamed the game for some of the relationship breakdown, but now looking at it from this new view point. The crack came on the bad week. I worked harder and harder at my business. He filled his time and the big crack with that game and we just got pushed more and more apart.

We never fell out, we never argued but we were drifting further and further. I don’t know how long he would have let us drift before it became too much. But I broke first. I came home one day, tired and probably smelling of horse s**t. I said, ‘Enough’.

We talked and talked, we tried a bit more. In the end we decided to take a complete break, for him to go and work away, completely away, an entire ocean away. I dropped him at the airport and cried all the way home. I knew (and I am sure he knew) that was it that, it was the end.

The other really valuable lesson I learnt from my marriage was not to be afraid of making mistakes. I would probably have called time on the marriage long before I did, if I hadn’t been so scared of what everybody else would think and if I hadn’t been so scared of failing.  Then I realised it doesn’t matter a jot what anyone else thinks, if they don’t know you and they don’t know your situation, they have no right to an opinion on it. I’ve supervised many people in all sorts of jobs over the years and the staff I was really impressed with, are the ones who were brave enough to hold their hands up when they make a mistake. “Oop’s that was me, sorry, how can I put it right?”

So that’s what I tried to do. I tried to be brave and say, “look this is a mistake, let’s try and get out of it as best we can, causing as little harm to each other as possible.”

If you don’t try things in life, you are unlikely to succeed, if you try and fail it doesn’t matter, you are no further behind than you were before. If you make a mistake don’t be afraid to admit it. Well that’s what I think, that’s what I learnt.

Ex Husband and I are still friends. Of course we are friends. We always were friends. He grew up with me, he helped me grow from a child into a woman. He stood beside me and together we fought life’s battles. So when I went to Hell he messaged me. I can’t remember what it said, but it was good, it was right, it helped. He was there for me when I needed him, he understood me because of how well he knew me. So you see, he might be my Ex Husband but he doesn’t have to be an Ex friend.

CHAPTER 12

CORONERS AND RED TAPE

Okay, we need to get back to it, I’ve deviated too far, for too long. Even now I am coming at it sideways. It’s like trying to get a jittery young horse past a plastic bag in the hedge.

What’s your job? I bet there is things you hate about it, things that are difficult. Would you want to work in a coroner’s office? Bet you’ve never even thought about it. I certainly hadn’t until I visited Hell. Imagine it, every morning, looking at your list of phone calls, not one of them happy, not one of them bringing good news.

Another star player, our coroner’s officer. Smart, intelligent, just the right amount of compassion and a business like attitude. Like I said, we wanted to bring him home, put him under the apple tree and say our good-byes. But you can’t, they have to investigate, explore, try and figure out what happened. Bring on the coroner. She rings up, early one morning. The law states they have to tell you what they are going to do. I won’t discuss it with you, you don’t need to know, you can imagine. So she put’s on her compassionate dealing with difficult subject voice and talks me through it. I nod at the correct places and then remember I’m on the phone so mumble the appropriate response.  She gets to the end of what she believes is the difficult bit. Then, her voice a fraction more chirpy.

“We will be taking him up to London, to Great Ormond Street Hospital.”

“No.”

This stops her dead in her tracks, so far this distraught mother has been well behaved, obliging.

“I’m sorry love, we have to.”

“No, I don’t want my little boy in that great big city. I want him to stay down here, where the air is clean, where the wind is pure.”

Bless her, what on earth is she meant to say to that? She must think I am completely off my trolley. Obviously I agree in the end, I have no choice and the phone call ends. Husband has arrived in the doorway. The look on his face say’s he guessed who was on the other end of the phone. So I relay all the grizzly information to him, he nods, a shade paler each time. But you see, I’m not the only one. I tell him about London.

“No, I don’t want him to go. We won’t be there to look after him.”

He does go. Eventually he comes back, no answers just questions. But it’s still not the end there are still hoops through which to jump. Firstly it’s the form, the dreaded form. The, ‘these are all the bit’s we are taking from your baby and what would you like us to do with them’ form.

Once upon a time there was a family, I think I remember from the news they were quite a religious family. Their baby died. I am guessing their story was similar to ours and there was no easy answer. So the medical experts take the samples and do whatever they do with them and when they are finished they store the ones they might be able to use for research and chuck the rest in an incinerator. They think no more about it.

The family finds out, now I am thinking possibly they have the anger which people have, (we will get to that later, but not now, I need to kick on now, past that proverbial plastic bag), they are looking round for somebody to blame. They find this, cease on this, “You have stored bit’s of our baby without telling us, how dare you, how wrong, how evil.”

I remember it in the news, I remember thinking, goodness that’s dreadful. But it’s not really is it? We are talking about tiny pieces, fragments, no more than he might have taken out of his knee, if he had lived long enough to fall on tarmac and graze it. I wouldn’t have gone back to that tarmac and scrapped it up. The reality of it is, do you really want someone to turn up with these tiny little bits one day, months down the line? Maybe you are having an okay day. Maybe the sun is shining and your favourite song is on the radio, you are cleaning the toilet. For the moment your grief is okay you’ve got a handle on it. A knock at the door. A man with a tiny bag. “Here madam, those last tiny bit’s of your son. Good day to you, and by the way what an excellent song that is on your radio.”

Okay I am sure that isn’t what happens. But you get my gist. Now please, please don’t get me wrong. Those family’s who were so angry, they had a right to be, it was important to them. I understand that, I appreciate that. They had their reasons, beliefs for needing those samples back, I get that I really do.

But goodness they made it hard for those of us that came after them. Now nothing, however small can be stored, incinerated or tested without your consent. So here comes the form, the red tape, boxes to tick, details to read, decisions to make, pages of it. The world is mad, completely mad. Can’t we just ask, “do you have any strong beliefs which will affect what we do with these samples?” If so pass them the form. If not, skip it, leave that one little torture out.

And so, finally he is back in the county, back to the clean air and fresh wind. “Can we have him back, please, it’s been so long.”

“No, no, there is more red tape. You need to identify him.”

“What, why?”

“Just procedure, I’m sorry.”

So we do, Husband and I, together. Now we watch too much TV. We expect, a massive freezer, row’s of draws, for her to pull one open and there will be a dead man with a tag on his toe.

“Oh sorry, wrong draw.”

Then another draw, correct this time, then that moment when they pull the sheet back to expose his cold white face and all the damage of the autopsy.

We are stupid, I am very glad to say, we are stupid and wrong.

There is no giant freezer. Just a fake little sitting room with all the homeliness of a cold snowy vista. But they are trying, it’s a damn site better that the freezer option. We hold hands, Husband and I, stealing ourselves for the moment. They bring him in, a little moses basket, there he is, wearing his baby-grow and a little hat. Someone has tried to make him up, so he is not too white. But he is not there, he is so not there. I have too look twice to make sure it is actually him. 

We nod, mutter something and sit in awkward silence, Me, Husband and baby. In the end I say, “can we go now?” As if I were still at school.

She see’s us out, the coroner’s officer, smart and clever with just the right amount of compassion. At the entrance, she smiles shakes our hands, “thank-you for coming, lovely to meet you.”

“Thank-you” we say “lovely too meet you too.” Of course it wasn’t lovely too meet her, what a bloody stupid thing to say.

So we go home, drive that long way. We need to fill the air, fill that hole. So what do we talk about? What is the correct topic of conversation for this scenario? We discuss whether you could fit a grown man’s dead body in a suitcase without cutting it into pieces. I think that was wrong, I don’t think that’s what you are meant to talk about. But the other options are so much worse.

CHAPTER 13

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 7 : THE OLD COLLIE WITH THE MASSIVE FOOT HAIR

Who do you know that would die for you? Who would lay down their life without a second thought? I bet your parent’s would, I know I would have for my little boy if I had been given the choice. But who else?

Unquestioningly my old blind deaf collie would. He wouldn’t be much use because his heart would give out pretty quick, and anyway he can’t see, but that’s not my point.

He is a bit difficult. Well, he is a collie, they are all born addicted, addicted to work and rounding things up. So long as you can cope with their addiction life is fine. He is a bit odd in other ways too, he’s had too many injuries to the head (failed attempts at rounding up horses) so he is just a bit special.

He had a stroke earlier this year and for some reason it has made his hair fall out on his back, but his foot hair has grown at an alarming rate. He now has feathers like a bantam hen. Sometimes his foot hair trips him up it is so large and unruly. I think it is similar to old men, with their ear and nose hair. I have no idea why in old age these things become necessary. Hopefully God does, or maybe it’s just Rory having a laugh.

He would have died for my son too. My Old Collie was one of the very few creatures who met him. On that one perfect day, our little chap was sleeping in his moses basket in the living room. Old Collie trots in, foot hair swirling. Peers through those misty eyes trying to figure it out. He looks a bit confused. Then he uses his other senses, all those ones us humans have forgotten about.

His eyes light up, “Ah, I’ve got it, yep, I understand. I’ll protect him too, to my dying breath.” And he drops on the floor beside the moses basket. To protect and to guard.

I could say more, I could tell you about all the fun we’ve had, all the good times and the bad times he has seen me through. But I don’t think I need to.

That alone shows how very special he is.

CHAPTER 14

LAST GOODBYES

I can’t remember when I first realised I was going to have to organise a funeral it just never crossed my mind. But I do remember that sudden dawning realisation. I’d planned a christening but not a funeral. But planning it got me through those first dreadful couple of weeks. It was one last thing I could do. I am fairly obsessed with organisation anyway, I am practical to a fault, so it was good for me to do something.

I was warned by friends, “it will be the very worst day, don’t say you will carry his little coffin, you won’t be able to. For God’s sake are you mad? You can’t say something, you will never be able to hold it together.”

They were wrong. I did all those things and I did them all with relative ease. I woke in the morning with a strange peacefulness in my soul, a restfulness in my heart and a new strength. I felt like somebody was holding my hand, guiding me through, propping me up. I carried his little coffin, Husband beside me, arm around me (because at that point in time we couldn’t hold hands.) We sat in the front pew, the very same seats we sat in almost exactly a year ago, the day we got married. The music was perfect, Middle Sister read our special poem perfectly. I said what I had to say, my paper shook in my hand but it was okay. I looked around our little village church as I spoke. Not a dry eye, so much love, so much support.

Holding hands wasn’t enough, through the service Husband and I pressed ourselves together gaining as much contact as we could.

Then we took him, Husband and I, to the crematorium, Dad drove. I had to see it through, I had to see he was safe to the end. I walked in with my son in a coffin, I walked out with a bunch of flowers. I’ve done some lousy swaps in my time but that beats the lot.

He wore his special baby grow, the one I had been saving for when the family came to see him. The one with cowboys and horses on it. The one Middle Sister and I had chosen all those months ago, full of dreams, full of hope. He took his bear with him, the bear made of love.

Later, a couple of weeks later. Husband and I poured his tiny box of ashes into a hole on his family’s farm. In a spot surrounded by the animals he would have loved. A view to the sea, a view to the woods and just over the hill our home where he had lived and died. We planted his special tree chosen with so much care by Mum and I.

Then Husband and I turned and walked back up the hill together hand in hand.

Nature’s first green was gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower,

But only so and hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

And Eden sank to grief.

As dawn goes down today,

Nothing gold can stay.

CHAPTER 15

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 8 : BEST MATE

I have no doubt that although I have known Best Mate just under half my life, if I were to add together all the words I have ever spoken to each person, she would win hands down. Mostly we talk rubbish but just now and then something important sneaks its way in.

Best Mate has been my boss almost as long as she’s been my Best Mate. I help look after her horses and I work costing legal files with her. We are very similar in most ways except physically, she is bigger than me, I don’t mean fat, just a bigger person. We have always said that we have muscles like men, from all the mucking out we have done over the years. We said that if we were to die in a horrific accident and just our arms were left the forensics would say, “looks like a man and his son.”

Recently she had a shoulder operation the surgeon said, “You have the shoulders of a sixty year old male construction worker.”

Did I console her? Don’t be daft, I did what all Best Mate’s do, I laughed and pointed out we had been right all along. She has thin hair and I look a bit like a fraggle with more hair than at least three normal people put together. Oh yes, I have to mention for the sake of both my husbands she has the most superb pair of b***s, and I really don’t. That is where the differences really stop.

God made us out of the same mould (just hers was a size up). And he painted us both with two layers of varnish. We are both fairly un-dramatic and pretty tough. We have seen plenty of life and death. We have made heart breaking decisions and carried them through. We have lived and loved. She was with me when I broke my ankle, I was with her when she smashed her knee. She’s had her own tragedies in her life, they are her stories to tell, not mine. But she has come through them chin up, still fighting, she is a tough, strong women, who I admire as well as love.

She understands me without the use of all those confusing words. We are at our best training horses together, one of us on it’s back the other on the ground. It’s easy, it works like clockwork. Always we are in the right pace at the right time.

She came round the morning after I went to Hell. She walked in the door, looked at me and we sobbed. “What can I do to help?”

“Can you bring round some work?”

“Of course.” No arguing. No, do you think you should be working?

She get’s me completely.

Most of both of our big life changing decisions are made while out on a hack. The horses beneath us have changed, the landscapes morphed from the affluent home counties to the rugged west country. We have hacked and contemplated in sunshine, wind, rain and hail but the conversations always much the same.

It always starts with an argument with the gate.

Then, “tell me something exciting.”

A long silence as we both ponder, hooves clopping rhythmically on tarmac.

“Nope, sorry, nothing to tell.”

But just occasionally there is something to tell. (Let’s see if I can get these in order.)

I think the horses were a grey and a bay.

Best Mate, checks her girth then looks across, reins in one hand, “He’s asked me to marry him.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing yet, what do you reckon?”

“Definitely, I love a good wedding.”

“Cool, I’ll tell him tonight. Fancy being bridesmaid?”

Still the grey and the bay I think.

“I’ve found a house in Cornwall.” I glance over my shoulder while moving ahead to let a car by.

“With land?”

“Yes, the rents good. What do you think?”

“Go for it. I’ll miss you, but you have to give it a go.”

Okay, we did do one on the phone. I think she rang me.

“Now the Landlords are driving me mad too. Did you mean what you said about us staying while we look for a place of our own?”

“Wouldn’t of said it if I didn’t”

“Excellent, cheers.”

“No, worries.”

So we can get back on the horses. Two bays I think now.

“I’ve had enough.” I pull my coat up around my ears to keep out the chilly wind, “I’ve told him, enough is enough, we are trying a split. But I know its forever.”

“Of course it is. I’m amazed it took you that long. You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Still two bay’s although different ones. It’s sunny, Best Mate’s horse is a youngster and a little skittish with the shadows of the cars coming towards him. I am keeping an eye on him and an eye on the approaching traffic. Trying to make sure my horse is in the right place to look after them both. I say, “I’ve been asked on a date.”

“Brilliant, how exciting, who? Anyone I know?”

“The mechanic I was on about the other day.”

“Excellent, I take it your going.”

“What do you think?”

“Don’t be stupid, you have to go.”

I think the horses are still the same, the youngster more settled. It’s hot, the flies annoy my mare, she shakes her head. I turn to best mate. “We’re thinking of getting married. What do you think?”

“Brilliant, yes, I love a good wedding.”

“Will your son be page boy?”

Then more recently. Both bay mares. The perfect autumn day,

“We’re thinking of trying for a baby.” Both horses are sane and easy I am right up beside Best Mate as I speak.

“Go for it, you’ll be great parents, you’ll love it.”

“But I think we should wait, I wouldn’t want it to be the youngest in its class at school.”

“Don’t be so bloody daft. No one is that fertile.”

It would have been Best Mate’s fault that my son would have been one of the youngest in his class.

Best Mate’s Dad

I can’t get through this story without mentioning Best Mate’s Dad. You see when I go to look after Best Mate’s horses it is actually at her Dad’s house, so I know him pretty well. He is an old soul, he gets it, whatever it is we are meant to get. He is quite a religious man. Not the type to ram it down your throat, he just quietly and peacefully gets on with it.

He has known great loss and tragedy in his life too. I know he has searched his soul and his religion for the answers and found that sometimes there just isn’t any. He is not naive enough to believe that bad things don’t happen, or that there has to be a reason we understand. He squeezes the good from any situation and casts the pith aside. He wears one of those pretty enamel badges too, like the one Dad’s Mother wore. This is me it says, this grief is part of me, I will carry it with honour and dignity. I will let it strengthen me, not bow me. He is one of my favourite people.

I think when he finally meets his God, whom he has served so faithfully. God will stretch out his hand, “How marvellous, to see you my good chap. Well done, you passed that final test with flying colours. Come, sit with me a while we will ponder on it all for a while together. I have your wife here, she is just pouring the tea.”

CHAPTER 16

GRIEF ETIQUETTE

So this is were it all began, with someone, either Mum or Dad saying, “When time has moved on a bit, you will have to think about the people who said the right things, let us know and we will all be better people for it in the future.”

But it isn’t that easy is it? Because it’s so much more than those overstated words. Words can be wrong in so many different ways. You can have the right words but with the wrong emotion. The wrong words but with the right emotion. The right everything but the feelings are not there. We all need to open our eyes a little to all those things us humans have left behind. The animals get it correct (except the black cat) and they don’t use words at all.

I can tell you what’s wrong. I can give you two examples.

About two weeks after I went to Hell I thought I better sort out my maternity allowance. I am self employed and therefore had been receiving maternity allowance in the short time I was unable to work before I gave birth. Knowing how these things work, I didn’t wish to find they had suddenly taken a whole load of money back out of my account. In those days I was bunching things together. I would heap a whole load of difficult things into one day and then try and have to whole of the next day clear of horrible jobs. So that morning I had already been to the funeral directors to drop off the bits which were going with him. I then went to the job centre which is what I had been instructed to do by the phone advice centre.

I walk in. The reception desk is right in the middle of the room. I walk towards it. A man with a name badge approaches it from the other side. I look at him and think, no, please no, give me a nice warm round lady. I almost turn and leave. But I think, no don’t be daft, he will be fine. I explain the situation. Twice.

He looks at me then down at his piece of paper. Unfortunately I don’t tick any box. “So to clarify” he say’s “you are not pregnant and you don’t have a baby.”

Nice, thanks chap. Why I didn’t leave then I will never know. He shuffles his papers. “You will have to ring the correct apartment.”

“Can’t I do it on line?”

“No, you can use the phone over there. Just dial six.”

I’m thinking all the time that I can’t bear another second but I walk over to the booth and press six. Trying in vain, to ignore the fact that the whole building has heard our conversation and are now staring at me.

‘I am sorry your call is important to us, but our lines are busy at the moment please hold.’ And then to add insult to injury it plays, ‘It’s such a perfect day’, down the line to me. I hold, I hold and I hold a bit longer. I can’t stop now, going through all this again would kill me. Finally someone picks up. I explain the situation yet again.

“Sorry we can’t deal with maternity allowance in this department.”

“Can you transfer me?”

“Sorry no, have you got a paper and pen I’ll give you the number. “ I look round no paper, no pens. I check my pockets but I left my mobile in the truck so I can’t even use that.

That’s it, I just can’t keep going. “Thanks for your help.” I hang up and start to leave the building.

A slight lady with a name badge blocks off my exit. “I couldn’t help but overhear, (I don’t think there was anyone in the building who didn’t overhear) I am so sorry for your loss. Here is the number you need.” She hands me a piece of paper.

Why, why, couldn’t I have been served by her in the first place? Do I thank her? No, I just break down and sob.

After you have had a baby you have to go to the doctors for a check after six weeks. Normally you would take your baby with you to be checked also. I had been putting off making this appointment knowing it was a hot bed for disaster. At seven and a half weeks I got told off by my mother-in-law so plucked up my courage and made the dreaded call. I ask for an appointment with my doctor.

“Sorry no, he is on annual leave, then he is fully booked for two weeks. I can fit you in after that.”

I word it so carefully, thinking please, please don’t say what I know you are going to say. “I had a baby seven and a half weeks ago. I am already late for my six week check. I don’t think I should wait that long.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “I’ll fit you in with another doctor. Your baby’s name please?”

I am a bad, bad person, I should have said something then. But I am just so sick of all this. So I just tell her his name. Then I pause. She is obviously typing in the appointment.

I say, “You may have trouble checking him.”

She is surprised, “Why?”

“Because I burnt him.”

Complete and total silence.

“He did die first.”

She gives me the time and date of the appointment and hangs up pretty quick. I know I shouldn’t have, but what are you meant to do? Again and again you have to explain it. You would hope that they would flag it somehow on the computers, but then I guess they aren’t allowed too. It wasn’t her fault, I don’t blame her for a second but sometimes you just can’t be polite and well behaved any more, not when Hell is still burning your heels.

So to answer my parent’s question. There is no right or wrong thing to do. Whatever you do, do it with sincerity and from the heart. A hug and a, “I am so sorry” is all that is needed for a stranger. Don’t say, “I know just what you are going through” as Best Mate’s Dad said no one knows how you feel or what you are going through. Some people have a greater understanding of your grief because they have had a similar experience. I think you have to acknowledge it, I think the very worst thing to say is nothing. People crossed the street to avoid us because they didn’t know what to say. I don’t blame them for that, but it did upset me. People did say some good things. I will even attribute their name to it because it is so hard for anyone to say the right thing.

“You will very rarely have bad days, bad mornings yes, dreadful afternoons defiantly, excruciating moments without a doubt. But it is almost impossible to sustain that level of emotion for a whole day.” Best Mate’s Dad.

“The hole will always be there. You just get used to stepping round it and over it and not falling in.” Best Mate’s Dad.

“You have to walk on, you have to kick all this to the side and walk on.” Dad

“Time will heal all wounds, but by God it takes it’s time.” Mum (stolen I know from someone else, but I don’t know whom so she can have it as hers!)

“You know you are on the road to recovery when it no longer seems like it only happened yesterday.” Marian

I have just been back through my emails to one from Dad which meant so much. But looking at it now it is too personal, I am keeping that one for myself.

For people that you love. Let them lead, if they want to talk about it then talk, if they don’t then don’t. Don’t be afraid to say, “and how does that make you feel.” Middle Sister does all the time. I tell her and I feel better for it. People are so frightened of upsetting you they forget that you are still you and you just want to be treated just like normal. Just turn up, be there, take a bottle of wine. That’s all the advice I can give.

CHAPTER 17

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 9 : THE BIG EARED DOG

This is where life really confuses me. I think okay it’s all random, it’s just a huge great lucky dip, and I pull out all the dud ones. But then other times just the right things happen at just the right moment. The Big Eared Dog is one of them. Go back a few years, way back before all this Hell. Go back to my last crisis.

Okay here we are, I am driving home from dropping Ex Husband off at the airport. There is a great big hole in my life. I have been looking for a puppy for a while, way before Ex Husband and I agreed on this split. But I can’t find what I am looking for, the ones I want are all too expensive, too far away, not exactly correct. Now I would really like one, Old Collie was old even in those days. I don’t want to be left in my remote little house, on my own, without a dog should Old Collie decide his time is up.  Equally I would like a puppy while Old Collie is still around to show it the ropes. And now I also have this great big gap to fill.

Big Eared Dog turns up. Okay, not exactly like The Littlest Hobo, (although similar in many ways), I don’t come home to find her sitting on the door step. But suddenly, and I think it was only a couple of weeks after Ex Husband left, I hear from someone about a puppy. She is the last of the litter left, as she is a bit shyer than her brothers and sisters. I go and have a look. She is perfect in every way (except her ears which were big even back then). So she comes home with me. The lady who bred her looked a bit surprised that I had come to collect her on my own. But I think that was the last time I have been anywhere on my own, she has been at my side ever since. She truly is the greatest friend that you could ask for.

 

CHAPTER 18

THE SECRET CLUB

There is a secret club, you don’t really know about it unless you are a member. The membership is lifelong and there is only one criteria, you have to have a dead baby. You have to be the mother or father of the baby, I think actually premier membership goes only to mothers. I am not saying fathers don’t hurt just as much, just that it tends to be the women who form the club. I have witnessed distraught Grandparent’s try to join, but the ranks just silently close. No one is rude but if you look on the forums they are just not accepted in the same way.

I didn’t know about this club until suddenly I found myself a member. Back before my Hell I knew of two people who had lost their babies now I know at least fifty. That’s a lot really, if you think about it. It’s not spoken of, it is a very taboo subject. There is so much that can go wrong, that does go wrong, no one speaks of it and then you become a member and the flood gates open. In the first few weeks after I went to Hell people stopped me in the street, squashed me to their chest and with tears running down their faces told me their story. I see them now, out and about in the local town. A soft hand on my arm, while I’m examining the frozen chips in the supermarket.

“How are you doing?” They really care, they understand better than anyone.

On day of the funeral after we came back from the crematorium, I stood making a cup of tea in my mother-in-law’s kitchen. A good friend came over, we stood together the tea slowly stewing, we wept silently side by side, for our babies, for each others baby, for the searing pain we both knew and felt. We were the only two there that day who knew, who really understood what it feels like for a mother to lose their child.

If you go on line, and I don’t advise it, you’ll just thoroughly depress yourself, but if you do go and look at the forums of any of the child loss charities, they are teaming with members of this club. Helping each other, supporting each other, complete strangers bound by pain.

There are rules and actually I have already broken one and will continue to, you don’t say, “I’ve got a dead baby.” You say, “I have an angel baby.”

It annoys me a bit, it’s a little twee for my liking. But that’s the biggest rule, you have total and utter respect for everybody’s feelings, because we are all a little raw. Don’t forget we have just had our hearts ripped out and jumped on, before being inserted, quivering and bloody back into our chests. In the same vein stillborn babies are not born dead but born sleeping, I like that, I get why that is such a better option. And you will see everybody always signs off with, ‘wishing you gentler times ahead,’ I like that too. I think it sums up the storm of pain and emotion, the longing for more tranquil times. I banned myself from these sites as they were the best way to ruin a day. But sometimes when it was all too much, I would sneak on, hiding from myself, and ask a burning question. No one ever had the answers, but I could immerse myself in the pain for a while, read other people’s pain and understand that sadly I was not alone.

CHAPTER 19

SUPPORTING CAST MEMBER 10 : HUSBAND / SOUL MATE

See, now I feel bad that he is last in the supporting cast when he is the most important. But it’s too late to go back and change all that now.

Soul Mates. Funny things, hard to explain. I would like to say our eyes met across a crowded room and instantly we were in love, but that’s not how it was at all. We actually met across my very drunk first Husband. Now, you are thinking that’s bad, that’s adulterous but your jumping to conclusions.

How do I know that he is right for me and Ex Husband was wrong? Were there stars and fireworks? No, but then neither of us are particularly romantic. We are both very practical. It was much more like finally putting on a big warm jumper, after wearing one that doesn’t fit for ages, one that rides up and gives you a cold back and is too tight to move in properly. Then there is this big, really warm jumper, made of soft lamb’s wool. You pull it over your head and it’s just right. Really cosy, plenty of room to move around, the sleeves are perfect, just the right length to work in without getting in the way. That’s my Soul Mate, my big warm lamb’s wool jumper, allowing me all the freedom I need but keeping me warm and snug all the while.

Anyway let’s go back to the beginning with the drunk Husband, actually two drunk Husbands. Soul Mate was Ex Husband’s friend in the beginning. I first met him when I gave him a lift home from the pub, they were both absolutely steaming drunk. Soul Mate chatted me up all the way home, Ex Husband was highly entertained. Soul Mate struggled to get out of the back seat of my three door VW Polo. I didn’t think, oh goodness I’ve married the wrong man, your the one I want to be with. I just thought, your a really nice decent bloke, who is great fun to be around. We became friends, that’s all it was. Ex Husband stopped drinking in Soul Mate’s local and I didn’t see him for a couple of years.

When Ex Husband and I split up, my friends wrote down a list of eligible bachelors in the village. The list wasn’t very long, the whole village has a population of only five hundred. I think there were five names on the list, my friends, hilariously, had even listed the pro’s and con’s of each candidate. If I remember Soul Mate’s the good point was that he could fix my truck, the bad point was that he was too fly. We never have worked out what fly actually meant.

Anyway the list got me thinking, so I engineered it to meet him again, which wasn’t difficult, I just booked the truck in to get some work done. I wasn’t looking for true love, just a guy to hang out with and have a laugh with. I was only three months out of a ten year marriage.

When I saw him I thought, now your a whole lot sexier than I remember. And I know why, he had been attacked a bit by life. Just a couple of life’s beatings here and there. They had left their marks on his face. He was a great deal more rugged than before. Before he had been sweet and smooth and baby faced. Now he looked like a man who had seen life, who had lived through some battles. Don’t get me wrong he is not all old and wrinkly. He just had a more lines of life on his face, the ones that show, the ones that are really marked, are the laughter lines. I like that, I really do. I remember thinking, you’ve lived through some tough times and you’ve come out laughing. I wouldn’t mind you beside me in life’s battles. I think, maybe, subconsciously I knew, whoever shared my life was going to have to be pretty tough.

He isn’t very good with words. He can make you anything you wish with his hands. But his words aren’t his strong point, they are far better when he is drunk. So with his word handicap it took him seven hours to ask me out. He came round using the excuse of fixing my trailer’s brakes. He did that, in the rapidly encroaching darkness then came inside and drank coffee. The Big Eared Dog was only a puppy at the time. When we went inside she had emptied every pot plant she could find into a big pile in the middle of the kitchen and was entertaining herself by redecorating the house with the resulting mess. Did he say, “Bloody Hell what a mess, what a disgraceful bad puppy.”

No, of course not, he wouldn’t be around today if he had. He got down on his knees and took the excited bounding puppy in his arms and gently caressed it’s unusually sized ears.

“What a gorgeous puppy.”

That was point number one under his belt. Old Collie trots in. As I’ve said that dog would die for me, normally he can be a bit odd with strangers. Not this one, he barks excitedly and breaths his disgusting rotting breath all over Soul Mate. Who earns point number two by gallantly patting the Collie’s furry black head and not exclaiming at the rank smell coming from it’s mouth.

He comes and sits on the hideous seventies sofa, cup of coffee in hand. Both of the kittens immediately jump on his lap.

“I’m not really a cat person,” he exclaims.

The kitten’s look at him and smile, “tough s**t.”

He is a cat person now, well, when it comes to those two anyway.

Seven hours later a lot of coffee has been drunk and he is just leaving as he throws over his shoulder. “Fancy a drink sometime.”

It really wasn’t that hard, surely.

So we do, we go to the little local pub and sit by the roaring fire. We talk and talk and talk. I admire his laughter lines, his big smile, his large interesting hands and his eyes which sparkle like the sea on a hot cloudless summer’s day. And that’s it. That’s really all there was to our dating. From then on we were just us, it was just right, there was no need for excitement or nerves we just settled right down to our new life together. Finally with each other, all those years, all those mistakes, it’s like coming home.

CHAPTER 20

ME

This chapter was never planned but it has taken shape as the story went on and I have found it needs to be included. This isn’t about who I am, I have never been a person who struggles trying to find out who they are. I was born with blood coursing through my veins carrying a love for two things, horses and a desire to live life too the full.  I am no adventurer, I have no desire to travel to far off places. But I do have a desire to experience many things, never to look back and say, “if only I had given it a go, it may have worked out.”

So I try, mostly I fail, but I will try again. A friend said to me soon after I lost my son, “But at least you had him, you had all those nine months, you felt him move inside you, you gave birth to him, you held him, you looked into his eyes, some people are never that lucky.”

And she was right, what an amazing thing to do, and for all the pain, all the anguish, I would never go back and not have him. It is worth all this, for what I did have.

Look at the things I’ve had, a brilliant childhood full of sunlight and laughter. I have the greatest of friends who will cry with me and laugh with me, who know me so well they know how I am feeling without so much as a word being spoken. I’ve had the business I dreamt of as a little girl. I’ve competed, I’ve won. I know my favourite things. The smell of hay and horse, as you tuck your hands under the warm rugs of a fit, muscled, clipped horse in winter and bury your head in its neck and smell that beautiful smell and listen to the contented munching.

I’ve danced with a thousand others to the beat of a drum. I’ve galloped through the waves. I’ve danced on my wedding day barefoot in the sunshine. I have danced on my other wedding day, wearing boots, in the arms of my soul mate. I’ve watched a thousand soft magic sunrises. I’ve watched a thousand fiery brilliant sunsets. I’ve carried my son, I’ve held my son. I know what it is to be a mother.

I’ve loved, I’ve lost. I’ve tried, I’ve failed. I know the height of happiness and the depth of sorrow. And really that’s what this is about. Some people go through life taking the middle of the road. They experience being fairly happy, being fairly sad. A bad day is when they lose their job and good day is when they buy a new top. Nothing wrong with that at all, it’s certainly safer. But I want to live, love, hope, dream and with that you hurt, cry, fail, stumble. All things have an equal and opposite.

My divorce taught me failure.

This has taught me sadness. Everybody said to me after he died. “You must think why you? You will be angry, if your not angry yet you will be, it always comes.”

But it hasn’t come and I’m not going to wait for it. I don’t think, why me, I think I always knew. I think somewhere buried very deep in that part of me, that part we no longer know how to access, I think I knew. I think maybe that was why I didn’t really like children, maybe that’s why I put it off for so long. That day, when he died the first time, it was just like watching a film you have seen long, long ago and you have forgotten the ending, but then when it happens you think, oh yes of course, what a s**t ending. We tried valiantly to get him back, so did the emergency crew, so did the hospital. I went through all the motions but deep down I knew all along he wasn’t coming back. I think deep down I always knew he was never here to stay. The frightening thing is I now go searching for those things I know, I know but I can’t access. Desperate for some reassurance that if we dare to have his little brother or sister that they are meant to stay this time. But I can’t find it, I can’t find the code to access it.

Anger, nope, I just don’t have it. I think when God was dishing it out he just missed me. I never have it, frustration yes, sarcasm I’m good at. But good old fashioned anger I just can’t find. I’ve searched, I’ve rooted around in my soul these last few weeks, poked into dusty corners and I can’t say I’ve found much new. But sadness, I found, oh yes. I found that before I have just dipped my toe in the ripples at the side but actually sadness is an infinite ocean. So that’s one to tuck under my belt, I have a degree in Failure and one in Sadness. See Dad I have been to university, it’s called life. Now I’ve re-read this and it sounds like I think this is a bad thing. I don’t, I don’t at all, I’m pleased with both my degrees they stand me in good stead. I’m just hoping the next two in line are Happiness and Success.

I’ve also learnt about grief, I think I may almost have a degree in that too, are sadness and grief two different things? I read about the word grief the other day, it suddenly sprung up in a book, I thought, how appropriate. It comes from an old French word Greve which means heavy burden. Goodness didn’t they get that right. Both myself and Husband have turned to each other at some point over these past few weeks. “I can’t go on, I am so tired.”

And that’s it, it’s not a tiredness you can take a break from, a few hours shut eye does you no good at all. It’s a tiredness from carrying this heavy burden. Luckily we carry it together, and my heart goes out to anyone who has to carry a burden like this alone. Some days he takes a bit extra and other days I do, but mostly we just struggle on sharing it half and half. But gradually our muscles are getting stronger as we are becoming more accustomed to it’s weight, we’re finding a way to grip it so it doesn’t pull us over. 

So which is it? The Rory and God theory or the Old Soul theory. I think it’s both I think it’s a mixture with some other stuff in there too. We can try asking God, we can ask him why my baby died. I should take my anger to him, to place at his feet. But I can’t, the box marked anger is empty. But I can take my sadness. I haven’t even got enough boxes to put it in. I will place it at his sandal clad feet. It will lap around his toes, swirling, infinite, deep blues, azure and turquoise. I will bend to his feet amongst the sadness. I will notice he has a black toe nail where maybe he has dropped something heavy on it.

“Why?” I ask.

“I’m sorry.” He answers.

“But why?”

“There is a reason, you know that really in you heart, in your soul.”

“I can’t find it.”

“Your looking in the wrong place.”

“Tell me the right place.”

He chuckles and chucks me under the chin, “you’ve got a lot to learn, off you go and live your life.”

And he is gone, I am just left with the swirling sadness. I think he is right, I think there is a reason. I’m almost there, I almost get it, I can just about touch it with my outstretched fingers. But not quite.

So what have I learnt? What has my little trip to Hell taught me? It’s difficult to describe, to put into words. I have always said, “you can only play the hand you are dealt. It is up to you how you play them.”

I believe that now more than ever. S**t happens you roll with it, you recover, you go forward. It does not leave you but it becomes part of you. It makes you stronger, shapes you as a person. If you let it bend you it will, it will snap you like a dry twig and cast you to the side, a bit of life’s flotsam and jetsam floating unwanted and un-needed. Or you can stand up straight, take the punch, square your shoulders, look the world in the eye and move on. God and I, well we are kind of friends these day’s. I never thought about him much before. He was just there, some silly old figure in the background. I don’t know what form he takes if he exists, but these days we get along in a companionable silence. Walking side by side through the early morning mist, through the lush meadows of life. We have a whole new respect for each other. He will still hand me the cards I am destined to have, he doesn’t get a choice in that. Some he will hand me with a grimace, but always, he will chuck some good my way too, if he possibly can, just to show me that he cares and there is always light at the end of the tunnel however long and dark it is.

My rules of life? I have two and neither have anything to do with my trip to Hell, but they are the only rules I can be completely and utterly sure of.

Rule 1 : When choosing a man, always remember the better the man, the bigger the eyebrows.

Rule 2 : When choosing a dog, always remember the better the dog, the bigger the ears.

Hope that helps!

CHAPTER 21

THE ROAD HOME

A couple of weeks ago, Best Mate and I went on a road trip. We often go on road trips. Our road trips differ from everybody else’s road trips in the fact that we normally take a horse along too.

Okay, okay, maybe they are not strictly road trips, maybe we have to deliver one of the beautiful creatures she has bred to a new home. But to me they are road trips and I love them. It is the only time Best Mate and I get to spend any time together when we are not trying to do a hundred other things as well.

Anyway, we are on our way home. It is dark and very windy. We are both very, very tired. It has been a long way to drop the beautiful colt off. It is nearly the time we both normally go to bed but there are still many more miles to travel. I am driving, I am concentrating hard, the motorway is still quite busy, the wind buffets the now empty trailer which is light and I don’t want it to snake. Best Mate and I have talked the world inside out and upside down. For a moment there is silence.

Then one of us say’s, (and I can’t remember who, it is the sort of stupid thing either of us could have come out with).

“Who would you rather sleep with, Gordon Brown or Gordon Ramsey.”

Now we are both thinking hard, coming up with the pro’s and con’s of both, really chewing over this horrible scenario. Then we are laughing, really laughing, that big deep down belly laugh. And I realise I haven’t laughed since I went to Hell. And I think to myself, ‘You know what, I am nearly home, I think I can see the light’s shining for me, welcoming me back.’

Now that should be the end. But my Mum always taught me to say thank-you and I have a lot of people to thank.

I would not have found my way home without of my supporting cast. That’s what they did, they supported me. Obviously in their own stories they have the lead role. In my story I was a tree, bent and battered from by trip to Hell. My Soul Mate was the main stake driven in beside me, tied to me. The other cast members were stakes in a circle about me. With any of them missing l would have grown back twisted, bent by the gale of grief. But I will grow back strong and straight, because of them.

So thank you. I might print off this little story and give them each a copy, just to say thanks. But is that weird? To give them a really sad story, which they already know, which they are already a part. I don’t know, I will have to think about it. Soul Mate would take it in those lovely, big, interesting, capable hands. He would turn it over and over. ‘Look at all those words, look at all that emotion.’ He doesn’t read books, not one’s which don’t contain car data. But I would like him to give it a go, just so he knows how much I really love him.

I won’t bother printing it off for the dogs. They can’t read you know. Anyway they already know. They have been here all along, with me as I write, helping me with my tears. My loyal, loyal collie lying on my feet, so close I have to watch the wheels on the chair don’t catch his foot hair if I move. The Big Eared Dog standing guard by the door and normally one of the kittens asleep in my lap. They have been here all the time, holding me up, mopping up all that emotion.

And other thanks, all those other people who helped me along the way, who grabbed my arm when I stumbled. Some of you probably should have had a part in the supporting cast. I can’t name you all, there would be pages and pages, but to mention a few, both my lovely sister-in-laws, Husband’s brother and my lovely midwife. And of course my mother-in-law, she should have had her own chapter. Look I will give her own little bit.

Mother-in-Law

If ever there was a woman who deserved her own heading she is the one. She is the only woman I have ever met, who has two husbands, (one to be fair, she has divorced) but they both love her, both admire her. And I think it really it takes two men to handle her. To share her wrath and expel her energy. She is brilliant, she is small, tough and mighty. She is not a woman I would wish to cross. But I am glad she is on my team, glad she will always be behind me. We will always be on the same side because we love the same things, horses, dogs, animals in general, rural life, wine, but much more importantly her son and my son.

She was wounded to the core by his death, battered and broken. But she stood firm in the gale of grief. Held out her strong arm to us and pulled us from the darkness. It was her who very early on held me too her as I wept, clutched me in her strong grasp, nothing, no words. There were no words to say. When my moment of acute pain passed, she helped me into her truck and took me to my horses. Others would have said, ‘Stay in, you are physically still to weak.’

But she knew, she understands the link I have with the horses, it is the same link she too has. She pottered around in the field in a convincing portrayal of busyness. While I threw my arms round my colt’s neck. Buried my face in his soft hair and cried. He stood, bless him, as still as a rock for much longer than I think I realised. I don’t think anyone else would have known at that time what I needed, but she got it just right.

Special, special thanks needs to go to Julia and Craig, Marian and Graham, Kyla and Dan. Who opened up their boxes of grief, rummaged through them and picked out the bits that they knew could help us. Bless you, I know how much that must have hurt.

And you, thank you, for listening to my story.

 ---------The End--------

Whoa, whoa, whoa. There I go again, charging off before I’m ready.

Now have I got everything? My son? There he is, tucked in my heart (or is it my soul?). Goodness I hadn’t realised how much room he takes up and how much he has taught me, but its okay he is light, he is safe and warm in there. Now I need to pin on that pretty enamel broach, the same one my Dad’s mother wore and Best Mate’s father wears. Okay, now that’s done. I need to reach behind me, where is it? Where’s that big, capable, interesting hand? There it is, I’ll tuck my little hand inside it and hold on tight. Now I’m ready.

Now, come on world, what have you got for me? I’ve got a life that needs living and you know what? I have my little boy here too, so I have to live it for the both of us, so I’m going to my damn best to live it well.

Reviews

[Ivy]

Your stories really sad, but also really inspiring. I like the way you set it up, and the flow was great. You did a really good job.