This month is always hard for me so I have been employing some distraction techniques to keep me busy especially when the kids aren’t here. September is my least favourite month, well that’s putting it mildly actually I hate it. September is ‘the’ anniversary month, the anniversary of a day absolutely no one ever wants to celebrate. And I mean no one and I mean never. So September for me is a lot about distraction and a lot about being sad and wondering what should have been. In 14 years I have yet to find a better way to deal with September so I continue to distract myself. The problem is that each day has this habit of turning into the next day and then we get closer to D day and it takes superhuman strength to be distracted on those days. The last two days I have spent hours cleaning and baking to make sure I don’t have time alone to think. But then as always at night there is no more distracting you can do and you can’t help but think of all the things you have been avoiding thinking about.

So here it comes, tomorrow I have no choice but face the day regardless of how much I want to hide. Tomorrow I should have a 14 year old teenage son to spoil, a 14 year old to marvel at how much he has grown and how it feels like only yesterday he was a tiny baby. To think of all the memories we have made and all the other cliches we all know and love about our children growing up. I should be moaning about picking up his dirty socks and complaining about how he eats me out of house and home. Tomorrow like the last 14 years I will have none of those things, not one bit of it. All I have is a memory of you kicking me from the inside and the brief time I got to hold you and stroke your baby soft skin. It wasnt enough, nowhere near enough and even after 14 years it still eats me up that your not here. I can’t begin to describe how much I wish I could change things for you, the things I wish I could have done with you. I can’t pretend i wouldn’t be changing them for selfish reasons aswell.

There is no time limit it appears on grief, I’m still angry and I’m still broken from your death. I was pregnant for 8 months and I had a baby but I didn’t feel like a mother. I felt for a very long time that I failed you, like somehow I should have protected you but I didn’t. I know now that’s not true, I did my very best and I did protect you, I loved you and I made plans for you like a mother does. It sometimes feels like as a parent you spend a lot of time feeling guilty for the things you get wrong and feeling worried about what will happen to your children. That’s how I know that I did become a mother even though you weren’t here. I worried about what was going to happen to you and I worried if I made the right choices, I was a mother because I felt like every other mother feels when they have a child.

So tomorrow we will light some candles for your birthday and your siblings will blow them out and we will talk about you, I will answer their questions about you that always come and it will hurt but I will be so glad as always that they think about their biggest brother. I will bring you some flowers and talk to you, I will no doubt cry at some point and that’s fine, I will cry because I wish you were here to celebrate your birthday and because I’m your mum and mum’s do embarrassing things like cry on their son’s birthday.

And although I will always feel broken that you’re not here I’m glad it still hurts in some ways because it’s when it hurts the most that I feel closest to you and I wouldn’t want to ever stop feeling that. I’ll try to see it from different perspectives, I know that without having and losing you I may have been a very different person. I know that your death made me appreciate many little things that I may not have when I had your siblings, it makes me more empathetic to others who experience loss and above all having you made me a mother and I wouldn’t take that away.