I was well into labour on this night in 2007 and awaiting the arrival of Ella’s first sibling. At 5.40 am the next day on Saturday 4 August, later today, in fact, our only son, Ben was born in 2007 … in the lounge of our then home.
Tomorrow, well, later today, is his sixteenth birthday, or rather, would have been, had it not been for the unexpected leukaemia diagnosis, that came along when he was ten years old in June 2018.
There are a million thoughts rushing round my head this evening, thinking about what he might be like or who he might look like now; and what he would have studied in the end this last year. His peers are all finished with GCSEs and looking forward to the next wonderful stages of their lives, as they should be and life at this age should be exciting and all about friendships, bundling around with your mates and finding your identity, your tribe while making plans for a future of adventure and so much fun.
Later today, I will make a cake – his favourite – lemon drizzle; and at teatime, we will assemble to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ into the ether, quietly, still celebrating as he would want us to, all the while acutely aware of the silence when we finish singing. There will no whoops of excitement and joy around what gifts we would be giving and no giggling, as he blows out the candles and makes some quip about his hopes and dreams for the day and his future. Sweet 16, they call it. His beautiful older sister is almost eighteen now and these four years since his leaving us feels like all time and no time in the same moment. Difficult to describe, but something I feel certain many bereaved families understand and recognise this very same feeling as we do, on a daily basis.
So many emotions to grapple with at this time of year, knowing that his birthday is just six days apart from his anniversary and it’s hard; and we long for this not to be our reality, but it is.
And in all of the difficulty and heartbreak of losing our boy, there are so many blessings still to be seen, even if there is a huge Ben-shaped hole in everything we now experience without him physically here. I see my children, my beautiful girls, finding their feet, forging a path for themselves out of the heartbreak. They struggle from time to time, the language and words not always there, but the emotion fired out into the universe and I feel it. We all do, because it’s an unimaginable loss to experience.
This year, I have been quietly working on ideas and creative pursuits, some still under wraps! Family of Five, my memoir about Ben’s story and our own through cancer and into grief, is still in the final stages of being edited, but I am nearly there and I feel so proud that I have managed to put something into words as a legacy for our girls and a book that I hope other families can benefit from and find some hope.
My plan is to turn Ben’s Epic Journey into a charity in the coming months and I am currently on the look out for volunteer Trustees and interested parties to help steer and maintain the vision for this wonderful new stage in our Ben’s Epic Christmas Boxes Campaign. I am walking The South Downs Way (100 miles) again this year – starting on Sunday 13 August for a week, to kick off the fundraising for this year’s Ben’s Epic Christmas Boxes Campaign – our fifth year.
To celebrate Ben’s 16th Birthday and to celebrate the lives of the (far too) many children lost to cancer and other illnesses, I am starting a new annual awareness campaign for the far too many bereaved families, as part of our future charity, an initiative called ‘My Child Lived.’
The idea (initially online based) is for bereaved families to post a photo of their child(ren) who died, on the 4th August on Twitter using the hashtags #MyChildLived, #FourthofAugust and #BensEpicJourney, to name them and tell us a little about what they loved in life, or what you loved about them. Say their name and know that you are loved and supported by a millions of other families who are in the same boat and you are not alone.
Happy Heavenly 16th Birthday, darling Benny Beeps, our star strider xxxxx