Get Ready for Christmas

Get Ready for Christmas.

Your birthday has passed. We are now preparing for Christmas.

I have spent many hours in the past wondering what people think, what people feel. I don't much these days anymore because unless they have a Christmas Tree with no gifts for their child sitting underneath, unless they have ideas of gifts that they could have bought for their child,unless they are planning an alternative Christmas for the festive season when all of the family should be together but it would be too hard...then they just don't understand. They don't. Even if they try, they don't..can't.

For the second year in a row we are facing a Christmas without our son. We are buying gifts for each other, and also to each other, from him. This isn't how life should be. This isn't the dream I had.

I spent so many hours in my childhood dreaming that I would marry my prince, and we would live happily ever after in a house that was full of our children, full of laughter, full of playfighting and of arguments, full of gifts to exchange at Christmas, not just at Birthdays...but instead I have a grave to visit and a space in my garden where I remember the other 3 babies that we have said goodbye to.

I am increasingly seeing facebook and twitter posts discussing how wonderful family life is. The exchanging of presents. Making plans. Discussing just how much fun the festive period is going to be.

Not for us. Not for so many people that I know.

Then I look at the other posts. The ones written by parents who have been forced to say goodbye to their child or children, parents who have and maybe never will, bring a child into this world, or have managed to, only to say goodbye to them in the end. I see, feel, acknowledge the hurt, the pain, the unfairness. Because I understand. This is my life too.

My childhood dream of being a Mummy was so very different from this. My immature ideal of being a parent wasn't tending to a grave, it was tending to snotty noses, dirty bums, children who were hungry and relied on me, had arguments and needed me to help solve it. The reality is very different for me though, and so many others that I know. It is so so so sad. There is no reason that they should be without their children either, they never caused this, but yet.............here we are. While everyone else lives happily ever after. (it seems).

I am caught between my conscience and real life. I am a mum. I have a son. But where is he?

So many others ask themselves the same question. Society seems to ask the same question. To be without your child seems to make you less of a parent? But, we aren't. Regardless what age they left, they are ours.

I think about my life now, compared to how I was. I don't crave another child anymore. I don't seek that little person to fulfill my dreams and complete my life. I no longer want to invest all of my energies into making life so very different for one more little creation. I am spent. I am broken. I am lost. I see no reason for anything anymore. I no longer want another child .. a child who would now feel they would have to live up the memory of that boy that they never knew but yet should admire for his courage. That child who they would be visiting with us, even thought they don't know who they are. That child who was our dream and yet our heartbreak, and then that child came along to ease some of that pain. It wouldn't. I know that wouldn't happen for us, because I have lived it. We had our rainbow and now he is in the sky too.

I know that not everyone feels the same way that I do, and I totally respect that. I would never tell another person not to try again because we are all very different. But having Haydon, and then losing him nearly 16 weeks later has taught me that no other child would compare, no other child would ever fill that empty space that he left, no other child would be completely loved without reservation because we know how much it hurts if they ever have to leave so we would be guarded now. That isn't fair, on them, or us.

Because my energies are used up on him, even yet. Haydon. The boy who made it through so much to try and be with us, after a series of losses before. The boy who had a sparkle in his eye and a charm in his smile. The boy who stole our hearts and destroyed the life that we knew without meaning to.

I no longer want the house with the sound of several children, because his voice will always be missing. I am now barely caring for myself. Unless I am at work, and my needs are secondary there – those kids would always be cared for because I understand, I do.

Life is meant to ease the heartache but it hasn't. Time is meant to heal some of the open wounds, but it hasn't. Love is meant to make everything better, but it won't ever do that.

Instead I will look at my Christmas Tree and imagine all of his gifts there. I will picture how my life should have been, not how it is. I will imagine how my husband didn't do nightshift this year because our son was getting so excited for Christmas and he didn't want to miss it. I will think of wrapping up all of the gifts we chose especially for him and how we would have prepared them all for Santa. I will think of how everyone else I know gets a proportion of the life they dreamt of, except us.

Some may call this self pity. Some may call this realism, and others may call this healing.

Personally I call this 'my life'. No escape, no rescue, no fix,...just heartache and broken dreams.

I dreamt of having my son. I dreamt of calling him Haydon. It happened. I never dreamt that I would ever have to let him go again.

I miss the dream I had, as much as I miss my son in my arms. But nothing can change that now. My dream has gone, along with the precious boy that we tried so hard for, tried so hard to keep.

We miss you Haydon. You were, are, and always will be our everything, and even although you aren't here...you still steer our festivities for us, because you ARE our son, for always.

We miss you. We just do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx