Seven months after losing Elspeth

This is a late post, but I am obviously aware it is Mother's Day, and I didn't want my update post to be a dampener for anyone. All the Mums out there deserve as lovely a day as I've had. I had a lie in, cards, croissant and Danish pastry in bed, and I came downstairs to a beautiful vase of flowers and a pile of presents big enough to match my last birthday. I didn't even have to cook all day. I love our kids...they're ace.

There have been a few tears today, just a few. It is 7 months since we lost Elspeth, and it's beginning to feel like it might be a long while now. That's double-edged because you don't want it to be a long time and you don't want to forget anything, but at the same time you want to run away as far as possible, and time is one way to achieve distance. Time is however making more sense now. We're starting to be able to plan things in the future and life isn't jumping up and surprising us so much. Less time is spent aimlessly most days. Life is more organised.


It is more organised, but partly because I think we're becoming used to the fact you just can't get tasks done like before. You have to build in time for 'doing nothing and becoming side-tracked. Obviously you may look like you're doing nothing, but your brain is racing through a million questions and trying to make sense of something else you thought of or remembered.

There are still dark days and times where it seems it'll never be better, but now I'm as likely to burst into tears because I hear a child laughing, as I am for any sad thoughts. I caught myself grinning at my little children playing at a birthday party last week, and then I realised it had been such a long time since we had all laughed like that and I cried. I cried with relief because we were all laughing, and I cried with utter sadness that it has been such a long time, and that just isn't fair.

I guess now from the outside it's been ages since Elspeth went, and we should be well into rebuilding, but actually we've been in a kind of limbo in a lot of ways. Meetings and appointments have only just begun to ease off. There's no longer something in the diary every week, we no longer have a Social Worker and we have finished having family bereavement counselling. We have the twice-delayed inquest finally just in front of us, so I'll be taking a couple of weeks away from the blog around that date, and all you'll see will be posts I'm frantically preparing and scheduling while I still have the energy.

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, we're going to get married. We talked about it in 2007, got engaged in Summer 2012, and life has thrown a hell of a lot at us since then, but we've been delayed long enough now.

Here are the gorgeous smiles I've collected this month, including Michael Rosen's because it is so true, and some tigers for Red Nose Day...