Miscarriage - A Different Kind of Loss

In some ways, when you have faced the ultimate kind of loss, the loss of a child, you may be inclined to think that you should henceforth be shielded from bad stuff. You may think, you have been through enough to last not one but two life times and surely, this should be it. You'll be spared now.

Of course, I know that there are no guarantees in life and life largely does not seem to care too much about what you have been through already. If it has got more to throw at you, it will. There are plenty of examples to prove that...unfortunately.

It is with great sadness that we have to add a miscarriage at 8 weeks to our list of life experiences; something that is not often talked about. But I am sure most who know me know that I need to talk, in my own way, even about the things some might think we should not talk about.

Before, miscarriage was just a word to me. I knew it was something very sad but I guess even having experienced the loss of a child, I didn't truly understand its meaning until it happened to us.

No matter how common they may be and no matter how good the chance to having a healthy pregnancy soon after is statistically, there just is something so profoundly sad about looking at that screen on which you had seen that little flicker of a heartbeat just a week and a half earlier and see it so still; without any movement. In a way, I knew but to see it there right in front of you is so so hard.

I have found myself getting more anxious with each pregnancy and sometimes ask myself if I really could go through it all again...the worry during pregnancy (miscarriage, defects, wondering if baby sprouts an additional arm between scans!), the worry after, questioning if the decisions you are making are the right ones...

But...our desire to have another child and for Eoghan to be able to grow up with a living sibling sort of makes the worry and anxiety something I am determined to work through...somehow.

Sneaky blows out of the blue like these are not really helping me get there. Once more, you confidence is knocked for six and you find yourself looking for possible answers where there probably are none.

Miscarriage, with or without medical intervention, is traumatic. As ours happened over a weekend, it all happened at home. In a way, I was hoping for that but was shocked to be told that my body seemingly had expelled everything without me even noticing. The information booklet from the hospital advises couples that if they recognise the pregnancy (depending on how far along you are), they may want to take it and bury it (somewhat more respectfully than flushing it down the loo, I suppose). I was hoping to do that and bury this little being under our rose bush out back. Be it 6 weeks 8 weeks or whatever gestation, it is still our baby and I found the thought of it going down the toilet unnoticed quite unsettling.

As it happens, this is exactly what must have happened because I never noticed. This makes me sad. How do you not notice? I suppose it all very normal but still makes me very sad and I'll be struggling with it for a while.

December, Christmas and January of course have become quite difficult to navigate emotionally since Patrick's passing. Losing this baby so shortly before Christmas, has made this Christmas very hard. While it certainly is very different from losing a healthy 22 month old, it still is the loss of a much wanted baby. I guess I will take it a day at a time and try my best for Eoghan...who is very much looking forward to Santa coming in a few days time.

Always remembering our little Sproggy and Baby O'Loughlin.

Something Good

Over the last number of years, we have become very close to some of the parents in the SUDC family...seeing each other through the ups and downs of daily life as people, friends, partners, parents and bereaved parents.

I am glad we have them in our lives - but I also wish we did not have to know them. I wish we could live in blissful ignorance of each others existence and the existence of SUDC entirely.

But this has been our fate - for whatever reason. And therefore I am glad we know them and that we get to catch up with them on social media and more recently even got to meet them in person.

In October, we spent a lovely and relaxed few days in Scotland. Eoghan loved his adventure in the "aeroplane" and looking for William Wallace ... That poor American tourist will never know that my son had himself firmly convinced that he was the William Wallace. Eoghan was very concerned because poor William Wallace seemed to have left his coat behind on a table at the Falkirk Wheel!

It was nice for him to make friends with Ara and baby Haggis (Harris) and I hope we will get meet them all regularly and see them remain friends as they grow up. For us, it was really nice to meet Eden's parents and spend some time with them.

It meant a lot to visit Eden's Garden in Glasgow and walk Gregors Walk in Braco on a sunny autumn morning...even if we didn't manage to meet up with Gregors parents or Declans mum on that occasion.

In many ways, it was an emotional trip but one I am glad we got to make because we got to see a beautiful country and wonderful people...At least something good came out of something so heartbreaking.

Never forgotten...
xxx

Milestones

It is the end of the summer. Soon dozens of little boys and girls will return to school and for some it will the first step into the big wide world as they are starting in Junior Infants.

On August 28th 2014, St. Nessan's School in Mungret opens its doors again. This is the school that I put Patrick's name down for when he was less than a year old. The school, I had to call into to tell them know that they needed to remove his application as he was deceased.

Instead of picking school bags and buying books and uniforms, the day will pretty much come and go like any other for us. Apart from that feeling that it should not be like this. We should be sending him off with his little friends. A new chapter of his life should be starting that day.

But it won't.

And these little milestones, they sneak up on you. You wonder how it is that this much time has passed already. And with that, I feel myself growing unsure of what I am mourning anymore.

Patrick will always be 22 months to me. I don't know what he'd look like now. I don't know what books he'd like, or movies, or toys. I have no idea what he'd be like now, aged 5 and a half....And I hate it.

As much as mourning another missed milestone, I think I am mourning this.
He is slipping further away from me with every year that passes.

Miss you darling....

Dancing Shoes

The other day, I was sitting at the hairdressers flicking through a magazine when I stumbled across an article about different women who found themselves to be widows sooner than they would have expected.

One story struck a chord with me.

This lady lost her 1 year old to a sudden and terminal seizure that happened out of the blue while baby was happily crawling along the sitting room floor. They rushed their child to hospital by ambulance but nothing could be done. Bewildered and in a daze they got through the next days as the wake and funeral happened. A few days after the baby was laid to rest and the older siblings went back to the creche/school, the husband suddenly upped and left. A few hours later came a call. Unable to cope with that raw pain; that loss; he had taken his own life. She suddenly had to not only come to terms with the loss of her child but also her husband, whom she loved...the father of her other two children.

This made me realise just how lucky we are, Pat and I, to have each other; to have been able to go through this with each other; to be able to put up with and support each other through good and bad days.

This is in no way suggesting this poor man wasn't strong, was weak or failed in any way .... At that time, he simply could not cope; the pain he felt was too much and he could not see it lessen. I am sure he loved his wife and other children dearly...The pain he felt that day, that moment, just superseded those other feelings.

I am grateful that we both have been able to draw the strength we needed to not have gone to that dark a place.

I am grateful that Pat is by my side; ever loving, ever slagging....just being him....The person I fell in love with.

As we put on our dancing shoes to attend another special family wedding, I wanted to give him something special to remember both his boys by....

Rant Alert

To the little sh*te with the bad manners:

So, you thought you had to make fun of me out on my run earlier this evening, did you? Want to know something? I was out there running at that hour of the evening because I needed that run. You see, earlier today, me and my husband picked up our sons things from the creche. Our son, who, at 22 months, passed away during his nap; just like that. Tell me, why wasn't that you? Why do you get to be around? Clearly, you have not been taught any manners. We would have raised Patrick better than that. I just hope life teaches you a lesson or two and when it really kicks you in the balls, you might finally get yourself a little cop on.

Count yourself lucky you got the short version of this rant. A brief, yet clear:

PISS OFF!!

You picked the wrong day to mess with me.

Oh! And something else...

Screw that...I did not sign up for this!!

What can you say? I cannot describe how bittersweet it is to hold these items in my hands. Reminders of the mile stones in his short life; many of which he reached in Debbie's care. Things he loved. The hat he had just gotten as a gift from a dear friend of ours. His lovely shoes. His beloved Sheep creche bag we got him after the first time leaving him on an over night stay with his grand parents. His dodi. His bib...which has probably turned into a life form of its own having been untouched and Weetabix-stained since January 25th 2011. His little toy...

This is not right...Screw it, I did not sign up for this.

Sproggy, We love you and miss you always...our little star. xxx

Now excuse me while I go and wallow for a while...

Another Step Along The Road

Tomorrow, we will take another big step in our grieving process.

We are preparing ourselves to pick up Patrick's things from the creche he and his brother have attended since February 2010 and September 2012 as this location is closing for good. I guess, we should have done this ages ago but felt OK with leaving his stuff, part of him, there. This is perhaps giving us the push we needed...

Thankfully, Eoghan still gets to be with the same people and some of his friends after moving to the main branch they have a little bit further from home. He is settling in and currently busy discovering all those new toys and making new friends.

Patrick's bag and belongings have remained in the creche since he passed away and bringing them home will be emotional. Despite of what happened, we will be sad to say good-bye to this place that holds so many good memories for us.

As I think about this, another one of those things that we are forced to do by fate, I cannot help but feel sad and angry.

Sad that he is gone. That this really happened to us.
Angry because all I am reading in the papers lately seem to be stories about children being mistreated by their parents, neglected or even killed.

Two year old in China addicted to beer and wine?
22 month old left in the backseat of his fathers car as he goes to work for 9 hours leaving his son to die in the heat...allegedly after "forgetting" to drop him off at day care?
Parents turning their backs on their children over silly stuff?

The very people that our children should be able to trust and rely on most, their parents, end up being the ones who fail them in so many ways.

I would love to get my hands on some of those people and knock a good dose of sense into them.

Cherish the fact that you have been blessed to have become parents. A lot of us are denied this blessing.
Cherish your children. Support them and love them unconditionally. Who cares who they fall in love with?
You may not always agree with their choices but you are supposed to be there for them anyway (barring the odd extreme exceptions maybe).

As a bereaved parent, it hurts me beyond measure to see other parents mistreat, neglect or actively work on alienating their children.

Wanna swap?

PS. I too have to remind myself of this
occasionally.

Familiar Strangeness

Last weekend, we dropped by the graveyard on our way back from a day out on the beach. To water the plants. 

Because Eoghan was asleep, I hopped out and nipped in with our 5l drum of water and went about watering and making sure everything looked nice. As I was doing that, it struck me. 

How familiar all these actions have become! How normal. Yet when we stop and think we still get the overwhelming feeling of:

How the hell did we get here? Did this really happen? 

No matter how much time passes and no matter how used to all this we get, it will always be the most bizarre feeling standing there. It will always feel wrong not having Patrick there with us as we do all those normal, every-day and fun things we do as a family. 

It's becoming a familiar strangeness that often is hard to put into words or to understand.

Miss you lots, Sproggy-pops.

Musings of an addled mind

When thinking about potty training Eoghan and all that this might entail recently, my mind went on a complete tangent.

If we train him, that inner voice mused, that means we would have car journeys without nappies and as a results, with added emergency stops. When a boy has got to go, he has got to to go, right?

So, you are in the car along the dual carriage way when nature calls and you are forced to pull into the hard shoulder. You take Eoghan out and let him piddle by the side of the road holding him tightly so he doesn't run off and get knocked down. Eoghan then throws a strop over something or other, wriggles away... and gets flattened by a car.

Result:
You don't need to potty train him. It's perfectly ok for him to be in nappies until he is 20, right?


My head just loves to think of these types of far fetched disaster scenarios randomly.
Welcome to my world. 

Happy Birthday?

There are certain times throughout the year during which you expect to feel the MISS more so than on other days.

Christmas, anniversaries, your child's birthday.

Something I didn't quite expect was how much I would struggle on my own birthday.

Why? It is my birthday, after all. And I still love organising and scheming for Pat and Eoghan's and other people's birthdays. Why do I have such an issue with my own special day? It now seems meaningless and something I dread:

Messages of  Happy  Birthday on my Facebook wall, the cards, people wishing me a Happy Birthday...I just can't deal with that very well anymore.

You are supposed to be happy on that day. You are supposed to tell people that you are having a great time and be cheerful. How can I have a Happy Birthday when part of me is missing?

Instead of being excited and looking forward to birthday surprises, I get down and depressed leading up to the day and would prefer to spend the day itself hiding from the world.

In a way, I think I am just not sure how to deal with myself yet when it comes to this occasion. I am unpredictable even to myself and unable to foresee how I am going to feel and what it is that might make it all easier for me.

Interestingly, as soon as the day itself has passed, I notice my mood improving and a few days later, I am well on the way to being back to normal. It is not that I do not want to acknowledge my birthday at all, because I do realise that it is a day not just for me, but for the people who love me (for whatever mad reason) to show me what it means to them to have me in their lives...My parents, sister, husband, friends...

The words Happy  Birthday just have become words I find very hard to hear.

A few days ago, I reached out to other parents in our group to find out if they struggled with this day also and if so, how they dealt with it. A lot seemed to agree that their feelings towards their own birthday did change after the loss of their child. How could we possibly ever have a Happy Birthday again when a piece of our heart is missing?

Everyone finds ways of dealing with this...eventually. Some people take their birthday off social media to avoid the dozens or hundreds of birthday wishes. Others deactivate their accounts. People acknowledge the day in small ways...dinner with family and friends. All with very little fuss and without those two words: Happy Birthday.

One lady said that her friends will just post a little message saying: "Hey...It's your birthday."
It is a simple acknowledgement saying that they haven't forgotten and to let her know they are thinking of her.

I think I like that idea. It gives your loved ones a way to acknowledge the day, makes you feel good that people do remember but without the underlying expectations the words Happy Birthday may trigger...You sort of feel you ought to be happy, regardless.

Over the last 3 birthdays, I have learnt that there is no point in trying to do anything too birthday-y on the day itself. I just never really know what way I am going to be. I think I'd love for my husband to just be there, ready for a hug, going with the flow, a dinner reservation on stand-by, a card and gift ready and just tell me: I know this is hard....I love you.

It probably would be more sensible to organise something more a few days later when I know I should have bounced back.

So I apologise for being difficult to read during that time, Pat.
Apologies also for pulling disappearing acts.
Honestly, I hate being like this...unable even myself to figure me out. Please bear with me as I am learning what works for me/us when it comes to these occasions.

The Cover Girl and the Centre Folds

On Monday April 7th, just two days after what should have been Patrick's 5th birthday, we got to share our SUDC journey in one of Ireland's main national papers.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/health/some-people-dont-know-what-to-say-thats-ok-because-what-do-you-say-when-there-are-no-words-30157960.html

Some time back, just before Christmas, I was browsing the paper online and read a column named Diary of a Working Mum. In it, the writer spoke about that call from the creche; the one we all get from time to time. The one to tell us our little darling has a bit of a fever and/or is not him or herself. And then, for a brief moment we are torn:

We want to rush straight to the creche and pick them up. We feel bad about having to abandon work, perhaps yet again this week/month etc. We are mildly annoyed at this interruption because it might be a very busy day. This mild annoyance is swiftly followed by guilt - after all our kids should come first - but really...they do pick their moments!

I can totally understand every single aspect of this particular train of thought. At the time of reading the column, I felt the writer was really feeling the balancing act that being a working mother can be.

Guilt over leaving colleagues in the lurch and worry for their child.

Via Twitter I told her we were very painfully familiar with a different kind of call from the creche. One that old us that there was something very wrong. One that ended with us having to bury our first-born. I told her to sod work...Our children are more important. They are only small for a short while and when they are ill, they need us. It is what it is and we should not have to feel guilty for minding them. And as for those who choose to be childless and feel they should not be inconvenienced by the sniffles of our off-spring, well that off-spring is the future tax payer who will fund their pension...Or something like that. Bottomline was: perspective. They will not be small for long and we will make up for lost time at work one way or another.

Then I attached a link to one of my blog posts.

She contacted me back and asked if I'd consider writing something for the paper and I semi jumped at the chance.

It was a good opportunity to raise awareness....awareness of SUDC and what life as an SUDC parent is like. I wrote, re-wrote and re-wrote again and finally submitted it at the start of January.

We went back and forth for a while over pictures (they put us in touch with their local contract photographer - a really really sound guy) and then at the start of April I was told that the article would be in the paper Monday 7th April. Anxious to make sure we were all happy with the pictures etc., I asked for a sneak preview of what pictures they might want to use...

...And got sent this on Friday the 4th.

The Cover Girl

"Waaaaaahhhhh!" would probably sum up my initial reaction! I guess I was expecting an article somewhere in the middle of the paper or online....not the front cover of the "Health and Living" supplement. :)

Yvonne and the Independent did a wonderful job of putting all this together. They contacted the SUDC Program in the US for a short article on SUDC research as well. This way, I am sure we got tons more exposure than if it had been a small article somewhere in the middle.

We decided then to let people know ahead of time that this was coming on Monday the 7th April in order to give them a bit of a pre-warning at least.

I think the way it happened, it being published just two days after Patrick's birthday, it all felt like it was meant to be. It felt right.

Hopefully we succeeded in what we set out to do...Raise awareness of SUDC and what life as a bereaved parent can be like.

Today, life is good. Personally, I feel more at peace since the 3rd anniversary passed. However, that does not mean for one second that the miss is gone. It is still there, every day.  But that it ok. It is how it must be.

Never did think I'd make it onto the cover of anything though!


The Centre Folds :)
 

Thank you Pat, Eoghan and Sproggy - for the inspiration.
Thank you Yvonne for the opportunity!
Thanks to Sean Curtin for making us look decent!

Happy Birthday Sproggy

April 5th was Patrick's 5th birthday. That same day, Pat and I celebrated our 12th year together. This year, it turned out to be a Saturday.

It developed into a day that could only be described with one word....Happy. It sort of fell into place in just the right way and  it was so so good to feel happy. Though I cannot help but feel the occasional twinge of worry about perhaps getting a little carried away on the contentment front. You see...these thoughts are never too far aware.

We started with a lovely family breakfast and a trip to Thomond Park for me to watch Munster plough their way towards their Heineken Cup semi final place. (Thanks R + D!)

Like that Saturday 5 years ago, there was a lot of noise in Thomond Park. This time, I got to be part of it...as opposed to doing laps of the car park in the Maternity, occasionally stopping to listen to the roars coming from the 16th Man. Patrick was born the next day, a Sunday, and we were home in time for the 2009 Heineken Cup quarter final the following weekend. (Priorities, right?!)

I was especially delighted to see Paul O'Connell, who had sort of accidentally formed a special connection with Patrick, score a last minute try. It was one of six that Munster put on Toulouse that day and it really felt like our Sproggy was looking out for us all around between the weather and the scoreline. Perhaps though a combined effort between him and Donal Walsh as that day was also the first anniversary of his now famous appearance on the Saturday Night Show.

After the match, I got to catch up with a few people before heading home to the boys. Pat and I later had a lovely meal out followed by a few drinks with good friends. (Thanks P + D!) I think we were all giddy after a perfect day. The few drinks may have played a bit of a roll there too though....!


Hey Sproggy,
Thanks for the day, my little boy. We baked you a small birthday cake, got you a card and a present...new Munster Rugby Pyjamas...which shall be turned into Paul O'Connell Pyjama's in due course...To be worn by your baby brother once they fit him. :) I am sure you don't mind.

Love, Mammy, Daddy and Eoghan (and Tipoki, the cat)

Happy 5th Birthday

Thanks Paul O'C

Aug 2010 - 2hours before a family wedding. Bride and Groom received a Munster signed Wedding Card! 

A few days old. 

Dear Sproggy

Dear Sproggy,

It's been a long time since I last held you but it only seems like yesterday.
It seems not that long ago that I saw your little face in the window when I was leaving for work.
Has it really been 3 years since I felt your curls between my fingers?
Some of your things still cling onto your smell...fading so very slowly.
Your room is still much the same but gradually we're preparing for the day that your small big brother will move in. He is already taking over your toys.

What happened to you still feels as surreal as it did then but in a weird way we have accepted it as the very sad chapter of our lives that it is. This is the weirdest mix of acceptance, confusion and sadness I have ever experienced. Getting used to living with your loss in our lives is happening gradually but this acceptance is a little unsettling at times.

I don't like the way feeling your absence is becoming normal to me.

I often wonder what is like where you are. I wonder if you miss us. I hope you are at peace. I'd love to think that you check in on us every now and then.

Is Debbie there with you? If you ask Eoghan where she is, he will still tell you that she has gone for a cup of tea. I always picture her with a big mug of tea, watching you play; minding you. If you see her, tell her we miss her lots...just like we miss you.

I am sure you are proud of your little brother. He is keeping us on our toes and making us laugh. He has your mischievous nature and I am sure the pair of you would get up to all sorts of devilment if you were around. He is totally in love with his "motorbike" right now...you know, the little balancing bike that your uncle and aunt gave him for Christmas.

You should be starting school this year, you know. I think you would come home every day teaching Eoghan what you learned. I also think he would be insanely jealous of you being able to go on the school mini bus.

Last night, I found Tipoki curled up in your cot...on your sleeping bag...next to your Timmy. He never misses a chance to sneak in there, you know. I think he still keeps looking for you every now and then.

Your daddy and I are doing alright. We miss you. We don't understand what happened and never will. We keep looking for answers. We try raising awareness. Above all, we love you loads and will always do.

You should be 5 soon. Instead, you'll always be our curly haired little tot who loves Tipoki, birdies, sheep, books and broccoli.

Mind yourself my darling. Big hugs and love always,
Mammy

www.sudc.org

A child losing their parents is an orphan.

A husband losing his wife, is a widower.

A wife losing her husband, is a widow.

There is no name for us, bereaved parents. Perhaps such is the extend to which the world sees this scenario as unnatural, that it never bothered to come up with a name for it.

When a child is born, there is joy, cards, presents, people visiting. You get maternity leave to bond with this tiny person. In some countries, dads also get the chance to stay home and spend much important time with their children.

When a child dies, there are no words. Nobody knows what to say. Everybody feels sad and awful. The bereaved parents are supported through the wake and funeral process. There is no allowance for compassionate leave beyond the usual 3 days. Parents are dependent on the good-will of their employers and some will have positive experiences while others feel rushed back to work before they are ready. Of course, how could anyone put a time frame on the loss of a child? But some clause, some minimum (up to a month and beyond at the discretion of the employer), would not go amiss.

Then, within a certain amount of time, people not directly involved with the bereaved parents move on. They carry on with their lives. Of course they do. Perhaps, in ways, they want to put this awful thing behind them and hope they'll never have to deal with the like of it ever again.

It is then that they might not be able to cope with the parents who continue to struggle with coming to terms with their loss. They may not realise that this is something that these parents will never get over or move on from. To those parents, it is a new reality. They will carry this with them into their graves. Of course, in time they learn to live with it a little better than at the start but with them it will stay.

Some may find it tough to have this constant reminder of something so fundamentally sad.

On the journey through grief, the bereaved parents may find people who used to be close becoming more distant and strangers becoming new found friends.

We have been lucky. We have retained all people dear to us and gained some new friends.

Our world has changed. We seem to be surrounded by worst case scenarios which makes it hard to cope with times when Eoghan is sick. It could be a simple virus...but what guarantee is there that by some fluke it won't kill him?

When Eoghan is ill, I've been scared to go to sleep in case something happened to him while I slept. 

I guess, this too is something we will get used to.

While we miss our little man every day, our lives are still very rich.

He may not be here but:

There is sheep roaming the Kerry mountains carrying his name.

He's had trees planted and balloons released for him in almost all four corners of the world.

He's had a star named after him.

He has a patch on the latest SUDC patch work quilt. 

Pretty good going, I think.

XXX

Another Anniversary

It is now almost 3 years and this is going to be a frank one:

Since that day in January 2011, our lives have become so different...with a different outlook, priorities and challenges. Eoghan's arrival has helped us along this journey into the unknown. While our innocence is gone forever, he has helped us re-build our confidence as parents...that still being a work in progress though. The pain has not lessened but has changed. 

In the last 3 years, amid many good and happy days, I have done a lot of missing, hurting, feeling low and depressed. There has been one occasion when I felt so numb that I wanted to and have self-harmed to see if the physical pain would help get alleviate the emotional. (It does not.) There have been times when I thought that surely the world might just be better off without me. Moments when I thought that I am no use to Pat or Eoghan in this state of sadness.

Before anyone gets panicky, suicide isn't and never has been an option for me. These musings and thoughts are just the sometimes harsh reality of grieving - for me.

I want to grow old with Pat and see Eoghan turn into a teenager and adult, making his own way in the world. I want to see him get married and have a family of his own. I want to live life. It is precious and we never know when our time is up. I know I am needed here and want to spend my time with the people that mean so much to me. Despite bouts of feeling very low, I have always felt very much aware of how much pain and hurt that kind of a decision on my part would burden onto Pat, Eoghan and my family and friends.*

In time, us bereaved parents may look and act normal but trust me, underneath it all, we are not the same...How could you remain the same after something like this? There is a tear threatening behind that smile and a longing to be normal again; for it all to just unhappen. 

Standing at his grave still feels as surreal now as it did then. Triggers are diverse. Christmasses, Anniversaries, Birthdays can be hard days that are expected to be so. Then there are those days on which you get hit by an unmerciful wave of miss for no apparent reason…Perhaps, when you look at your subsequent son and briefly think of how different things should be. Then there are flashbacks or the realisation that his smell is slowly fading from his comfort blanky and that memories of him and his brother as babies begin to bleed into one. You are scared you will forget, that the world will forget.

For anyone wondering how we “do it" or “get through it”?

Because we have to. Life pulls us along. The earth keeps turning, whether we like it or not. You keep going because you have to and because you begin to want to again, too . You go back to work. Life demands and wants to be lived.

There is a heartache that is always within, lingering in the depths of your being. Over time, it becomes familiar and we somehow learnt to live with its presence. It is the bitter for every single one of those many sweet thing in our life.


Miss you and love you always and forever, my darling.
Xxx

*My heart goes out to those who lose that last shred of hope and whose souls are in so much despair that leaving this life becomes the only option they see. I realise those feelings of theirs are very much real and very painful. I wish they could see that there always is a new day. These feelings will pass.
But this act, once done, is not something that can be undone. Many many more lives are shattered as a result. Whether they realise it or not, they will be missed. Dearly.

It makes me so very sad to think that someone could be in that much pain and feel that alone. I wish that we, as a society, were more in tune with those peoples sometimes subtle requests for our help. It is very hard to bear these inner most feelings and thoughts to even the closest of friends or family. 

A New Year

It is the start of another year. The days are slowly getting longer again. Soon, winter will give

way to another spring, then another summer. And so times goes by. 

For now the objective is to make it through January. Day by day.  Hour by hour, if necessary. I find my concentration and ability to deal with what I would now probably consider small, irrelevant and meaningless drivel, is at an all time low during this time. It can be very hard to get myself to care about certain things when my mind is elsewhere;  still trying to figure out:

Did this really happen?

How the hell did this happen?

We don't know. We probably won't ever know.

Back in Nov 2012 I had my DNA taken for testing following a slightly abnormal ECG reading during our check-up at the CRY centre in Tallaght. The slight abnormality pointed into the general direction of Long QT without saying I actually really do have it. From what I understand, it could be a case of me being a carrier of this disorder and/or being asymptomatic for now.

My DNA was checked for abnormalities on the genes that are usually associated with Long QT.

Everything turned out to be in prefect order. No mutations, missing bits or other funny stuff.

Or something like that...Still waiting for the final report.

For now the bottomline is that they found nothing out of the ordinary. 

However, they cautioned that they only checked the currently known genes associated with Long QT. There may be others that have not yet been discovered. Therefore, they recommend that we continue to be checked and monitored.

I could still turn out to be a carrier for Long QT.

Patrick could have had it, unbeknownst to us.

Or another undetected heart condition.

I really really wish that two things were done routinely in this country because thinking it might have been something that was preventable is what would probably upset me the most: 

1. Check every newborn for common heart conditions at birth and make this a routine check during their health check-ups growing up. Perhaps at birth, age 2, 5, 10, 15 if nothing odd shows up and closer monitoring if there are question marks. Then, work with those parents whose kids do have a diagnosis. Educate them in what their kids can and cannot do in terms of sports and physical activity...You really do not want to be raising couch potatoes because the parents are too worried to let them run around. 

2. If there is a sudden and unexplained death in children over the age of 1, please, please start taken DNA samples for testing. Even if it seems unwarranted for whatever reason at the time: Better to be looking at it than to be looking for it!

And so here we are again: a new year, a new January. New possibilities, challenges, ups and downs. Another anniversary and birthday to come. 

This year, Patrick should be turning 5. He should be looking forward to school in September. I am sure he would come home every day teaching Eoghan whatever he learnt in school. I am sure Eoghan would be jealous of him getting on the big boy school bus. 

All we have now are our memories and our minds picture of what could have been. 

Sometimes, that does not feel enough.

Sometimes, the hurt and the miss are as big as the day it happened.

Eoghan is our bit of sunshine on those days...always managing to make us smile and laugh. Always willing to give us a hug...the biggest ones usually during drop off time at the creche in the morning when, at times, you'd need a crowbar to pry him off us. 

Eoghan is teaching us that unconditional love can survive such a massive heartache and breathe new life into broken souls. It amazes me how sometimes you can feel such despair and such love all the same time...How these very different emotions can co-exist. 

It makes you appreciate what you have while sometimes making you scared about losing it all over again. It makes you want to hold on to all the important things in life...The things that matter. 

So, we don't know where our journey will bring us to or what is around the corner for us. All we can do is choose what is important to us and appreciate the small things in our life. We all only get one chance ... it is up to us to make it count.

"Wake Me Up" - Avicii

Feeling my way through the darkness

Guided by a beating heart

I can't tell where the journey will end

But I know where to start