A Note to Heaven (8)

Thinking of you on your 18 month anniversary in Heaven Bobby.

Mummy misses you more and more each and every day.

Angel Memorial Journal

I have taken part in a Memorial Journal in the past and as sad as it is to see it be slowly filled with Angels, it made me realise that I am not alone. I hope to do the same for others out there. I would like to set up and send out one journal for everyone to add their Angel to; a little like a chain mail email.

Here is how it will work:

If you are interested, please list your name to the comments section of this post and starting from March 1st (to give it enough time to build a list of enough names), I will send the journal to the first person who has posted their interest.

When you receive the journal please include the following information:

*Your Angels Name – including nickname if you wish
*Your Angels Date of Birth
*Your Angels Time of Birth
*Angels Weight and Length (if known)
*The Cause of Death (if known)

**The Date they Grew Their Wings
**Time they Grew Their Wings
**Or 'Born Sleeping' - 'Born with Wings' or whatever term you feel comfortable with

*Parents Names (first names only)
*Any Siblings Names (first names only)
*Anyone special you would like to mention, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Midwife ect
*A Message to your Angel

***If you wish you can add a message to the next family to receive the journal. You are also free to tape a post card from where you live or a photograph of a special place***

I do not advise you include a picture of your Angel into the journal in case it falls into the wrong hands, I also advise you be careful with putting surnames or naming hospitals. DO NOT add any information in the journal that you do not wish others to read.

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When you receive the journal I ask that it is posted on to the next person on the list within 3 days of you receiving the journal; postage and packaging costs will be down to you and you must post via Recorded Delivery (or the equivalent in countries outside the UK because this will guarantee that the journal will not be lost in the post). 

Please DO NOT place your name below if you cannot post forward within or outside of your country.

Please DO NOT place your name below if you are not willing to give out your address to myself and the person sending the journal to you.

Please note that anonymous posters will not be accepted, only those who can be traced back to a blog, Twitter or Facebook will be, purely for safety purposes.

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There is no long term plan for the journal. When one is filled up I will simply send out another. The journal will then be kept with myself and stored in Bobby’s memorial box and it can be requested to look at at any time. Filled journals can be kept for 1 week and then they must be posted back to myself.

It would be great if as many Angels were included in this and I hope that you can take part. If you live close to or know another Angel Mum near you then please ask if they would be interested to save on postage costs.

Please add your interest – NOT your address - below if you are interested. You name will be added to a spreadsheet stored on my laptop and I will contact you for your address when your turn comes round.

Please feel free to email me any questions you may have.

Looking Towards 2011

In the New Years Eve post of 2009 I reflected on the bad things which had happened that year; namely Bobby dying.

For 2010's New Years Eve post I have chosen instead to write about what is planned for 2011, about what 'good' I have planned for this new year and hopefully in doing so, it really will feel like a brand new year and not just an extension of the old one.

January is the month I have high hopes for. I am having my tonsils out on the 11th and so I have two weeks off work. I can not explain how much I am looking forward to having those two weeks off. I plan on spending some of this time finally finishing all of the little projects I started last year and having a proper spring clean of this flat. I have my hopes rested on by having my tonsils out it will get rid of this constant sore throat and head cold that I have had since May.

Once the recovery process is over, I am going on a diet, I am going to start going to the gym. I plan on losing the 2 stones I have put on since Bobby's pregnancy and death. If I can get back down to a size 12/14 I will be a very very happy woman.

In February I will have my first ever driving lesson. Scared shitless does not fully describe how I feel about getting behind the wheel of a big scary machine.

This month also sees both of my parents birthdays and two separate meetings with friends. One an afternoon lunch with a group of ladies I have been friends with since moving down to London 10 years ago and the other, is a girly weekend away staying with a very good Angel Mummy friend and her little girl; the same AM who came to stay here in November.

March brings another meet with a fellow Angel Mum but one whom I have yet to meet in 'real life'. Like many of the other Angel Mum's I am happy to call my friend despite never meeting, we met online via a support network. Unfortunately because we live on either end of the country, it has meant that we have had to wait until this time to arrange a proper get together. I think it will be a nice day. She is someone I have been waiting to meet in person for a long time.

It is also the month where the charity I am a part of gets to hold its own stall at a certain huge craft fair. Fingers crossed the weekend allows them to spread their word and that it works wonders for them.

April; the MILs' birthday and although I feel as though I am repeating myself, it brings yet another meet but this time with my Cousins and my Brother all of whom live up North and who are coming down here to London for the day.

May sees yet another meet, this time with old school friends back home. Friends who have been there before and since Bobby. My really old, really good friends.

It is also our parents 30th wedding anniversary during May and my second Race for Life run.

June brings my Brothers 26th birthday. Bless him.

July is the month of birthdays. It holds a very close AM's little boys 2nd birthday and her Rainbow Daughters 1st birthday. It is Bobby's 2nd birthday and my 30th. Due to his birthday being six days before mine and the fact that I am far from looking forward to turning 30, I am planning on taking two weeks off work and for the OH and I to go away somewhere. We haven't had a proper holiday since 2004 so we are well overdue to say the least. This is if I pass my probation at work which I will find out during this month.

August holds a friends little girls 2nd birthday.

September my Brother and I are running a half marathon in London and I plan to raise money for Lisa's Stars.

October ... who knows. I don't but hopefully it will bring something good. 

November is what would have been Bobby's 2nd proper birthday but I am not sure how I will feel on that day so I can not yet say what I will be doing on that day if anything at all.

December. Who knows what it will bring. I just hope whatever does happen, it will see us going into yet another new year feeling good about the one we will be leaving behind.

When Two Worlds Collide

What is the difference between grief and depression? Google says they can both be seen as the same and yet there is a slight difference. Those slight differences of what it lists I appear to have. Does that mean I have depression?

I have just called my Doctors but there is no answer. I need to see a Doctor. I need to speak to someone about going onto Anti Depressants. I don’t want to go on them and I have always pushed them aside when someone has suggested them in the past but feeling the way I currently do and having the thoughts I had while lying in bed last night; maybe they are the one thing which can help me.

Crying yourself to sleep while wondering what your OH would do if he found you dead in the morning next to him isn’t a healthy thing to imagine is it. That is more then just grief isn’t it. I know I wouldn’t go as far as to harm myself but that doesn’t stop the thoughts from being there. I can’t actually remember the last time I cried myself to sleep. Only when I am having my ‘sad days’ do I cry myself to sleep. I feel as though I am currently having a good few sad weeks, not days. I don’t mind the odd ‘sad day’ but this is something different.

I thought my feeling down was due to the up and coming Christmas period but I still feel the same as before it arrived. I am on my period, maybe this has contributed to it. I don’t know. I really don’t know anything anymore except that I feel ‘down’. I feel irritable with everyone. I’m nasty to my OH. I don’t want to speak to anyone; not even online. I can not be bothered. I would like to be left alone.

I am tired, really tired. Not only in body but also in mind. I could quite easierly fall asleep and not wake up. Despite not waking until 5:30pm the last two days I am still so tired. It feels as though no matter how much sleep I do get, it’s never enough and to top it all off; I was late for work again this morning by an hour and a half.

Nothing currently feels right in my head or body and I don’t know if it ever will again.

Christmas 2010

I’ve nothing much to write about.

It was nice spending a couple of days with my parents, Brother and seeing my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins but that was it. We ate, we played cards, we ate some more but there was something missing and our second Christmas since Bobby has made me realise that there always will be something missing. I’m never going to truly enjoy Christmas again, not even when we do have our Earth family because one member will always be missing.

There will always be an empty space under the tree where his presents should sit.

He would have been 13 months old now had things worked out. He would have had a little understanding of what was going on. Like the other babies on my old Birth Board he would have been able to unwrap his own presents, he would have smiled for the camera. He would have shared our Christmas dinner. Instead he spent this Christmas underground, with a wreath, Santa snow globe, a snowman candle and a mini silver tree as his presents. What 17 month old wants’ those things as presents.

We visited his grave on Christmas Eve for the first time since September and it was buried underneath the snow so much that you couldn’t make it out at first. Someone had walked over it because they had left footprints.

His stone still hasn’t been placed, 17 months on and the grave still doesn’t have a headstone. WTF are they going to sort it out and put it on?! We argued again, the same as we do every time we visit. Apparently I ‘hog’ the grave and want it done my way and I will not let my OH help me with it. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that, I am so used to doing things on my own when it comes to Bobby or being told ‘Its up to you’ when I ask his advice or opinion about what we should do, that I do automatically take over. This is his fault, not mine. He has made me that way.

We then got onto the subject of his photos. I asked him when he will look at his Son but he still refuses. I speak about how it would be nice to have a picture of him up but he replies that he doesn’t want him out on show and that he thinks it’s strange. He says if he came to someone’s house and they had their dead child’s photos out on display that he would think it strange and uncomfortable. This if course upset me; it made me wonder if he is ashamed of his Son despite the fact he has never seen him for himself. All I would like is one photo of him up in our bedroom on his self along with his teddies and his scan photos. I don’t want him scattered around the house, I would just like one photo. It’s not as though we have enough photos of him to put in every room anyway.

No matter what, photos are not what I really want; what I would really like is our 13 month old little man here now with us. What a completely different life it would be.

A Quick Chat

I haven’t done a proper blog post for what seems like ages but I need to get this down.

I have just been in my Boss’s office for a ‘quick chat’. I hate those kinds of chats because I know that the ‘quick chat’ really means ‘a boll *** ing’.

He says he is concerned about me, that he has noticed a few things over the past few weeks and how things need to improve in not only my attendance and my lateness but also in the work I do itself.

I seem distracted he said. People have been moaning about me behind my back he said. He can’t be seen to discipline the shop floor staff while I am seemingly getting away with coming in an hour late or forgetting to do simple parts of my job he said.

Silence

Ive been feeling a little run down the past couple of months, I keep coming out in colds I say. I’m constantly tired, I can’t physically get out of bed each morning, I do nothing when I get home except sit on the computer all night because nothing really matters, I said.

Silence

I don’t like this time of the year I said. Cue a chin rumble and a broken voice as I try to keep the tears in while slating myself in my head for even contemplating crying in front of this man. I have months where I am fine but something will trigger and I will feel down for a few weeks, I said.

Thankfully my boss knows what I am going on about so I don’t need to go into detail and his tone of voice changes as he says ‘it can’t be easy for you but you need to see it from my point of view’. With that he goes on to say that he wishes I would approach him before he approached me.

I would but I can’t, I said. I have trouble talking about it.

He is right though, this can’t carry on.

I know full well in my head that I can no longer hide behind others grief to mask my own and yet my heart is too afraid to reach out and ask.

I know full well that I need to unlock this volt inside and allow everything to empty out. I just need someone to help me do it.

I am so scared that once I start I will not be able to stop but it’s something I must do otherwise I will never be able to move on.