I wish

Liam what am I meant to wish for now…knowing that the only thing I wish for can’t come true?

Since your death Liam it seems I am surrounded by opportunities to ‘make a wish’, dandelion heads, wishbones and eyelashes to name a few. Invitations to birthday parties are harmless enough and I find a way to smile and enjoy myself, through the pain. Then it gets to the time where the cake comes out. This used to be my favourite time because once the birthday speech and singing were over I got to eat the cake. Liam I think you would have liked cake as much as your Mummy, Daddy and brother do. However, now as soon as I hear those words, “make a wish” my eyes well up, my legs weaken and by stomach flips up into my chest and wedges itself under my heart to stop it from suffering anymore damage.

It is not as if I don’t wish Liam, I do wish. I wish that each morning I no longer have to wake up to the fact that my youngest son is dead and that I will never again have the opportunity to kiss your forehead, tickle your toes or watch you grow.

I wish that my body had been able to carry you to term like your brother and our hospital stay after your birth was spent bathing, feeding and cuddling you in our arms and not spent in an eerily quiet room while you slept on the other side of the hospital and the only cries I heard each night were coming from someone else’s baby.     

I wish that I could join in the conversation about being tired from lack of sleep. However I can’t chime in with stories of you keeping me up all night and me having to cuddle you gently back to sleep. I am tired because I was crying into my pillow while clutching my stomach trying to somehow fill the void that your death created and no-one wants to hear about that.  

Liam I wish that it was water from Caden’s drink bottle that left the puddle on the seat in the car last week but it was not him…it was me. The tears just would not stop streaming down my cheeks on the drive home from the supermarket because I followed a mum down the aisle with a healthy baby boy and my arms were empty. 

I wish I didn’t have to make it through each day with this suffocating pain, indescribable emptiness, overpowering weight bearing down on me and the complete loss of normal memory, function, feeling and ability. I just try to breathe each morning as we wake to do it all again.

Liam I wish I got to see you and Caden play: kick a ball, ride a bike or build make believe forts under the kitchen table together. Instead, Caden now plays alone. Do you know he learnt to roll the ball against the wall the other day so it would roll back to him? I cried for the next hour at all the future moments he now has to adapt to as our only living child.

I wish I could complain about how exhausting having two children to look after is. Instead I am left to look after one son while protecting the memory of the other. Liam only having one child to look after when there should be two is not just exhausting it’s inconceivable.

Liam so what do I wish for…when none of my wishes can come true?

Love Mummy