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Five years without you.

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I can remember so clearly when and where we were when we found out we were expecting you. Earlier in the day I had been writhing around on my bed in agony. My first and genuine thought was that I had another tumour. Having had three ovarian tumours the pain was extremely similar. I didn’t want to believe it was another tumour, as I knew that meant I would have to go to hospital. Normally this isn’t a problem but this particular day Cornwall and most of the UK had severe weather warnings. Many places were under water from burst rivers and torrential rain. Our main road to the hospital had trees down and I knew we would have to go the long way round to even get to A&E. But alas I knew we had to go. Having lost my right ovary from tumour strangulation, and part of my left ovary for the same reason. I knew that if I didn’t catch it in time I would lose the only remaining slither of my left ovary. So your daddy packed me an over night bag and I text my boss to say I was poorly. We bundled into the car, I was in a serious amount of pain, feeling every bump in the road. What normally takes 20 minutes took over an hour but we made it.

Once inside I remember going through all the normal questions and answers. I was being investigated at the time due to an undiagnosed heart condition, so was used to being poked and prodded. After a little while the general consensus was that they would send me for a scan…but…the doctor came back to say…I don’t have a diagnosis for your pain, but you are pregnant. I was curled up in the foetal position on the bed and your daddy’s jaw dropped to the floor. After 8 years and no success we had given up believing that we could have a family and there we were, in the middle of the worst storm Cornwall has seen for years, we were being told that you existed. Wow. Just wow. From that moment it was all about you. You were the one who mattered.

As my stomach burgeoned and I traced my fingers over my belly I could feel your touch from the inside. I have never felt as good about myself than when I was pregnant with you. My body was your home. Everything I did would affect you. I had the most important job in the world. To be the best incubator for you. I was on the top of the world as I watched my body change to make room for you. Whilst I was pregnant with you I had 61 hospital appointments but you were worth every single one. You were worth all the fear and anxiety. You were loved so very dearly from the moment we knew you were there. I don’t think I really believed you were really real until you were placed in my arms.

It really upsets me to know that you will never get to meet your little brother Arthur. You will never get to hold hands, play together, squabble and grow into fine young men together. What I do know is that you share something so special. I know that both of you grew in my body, you have both heard my heart beating from the inside. I missed being pregnant when you were born, I missed having you all to myself, but I loved having you in my arms even more. From the moment I touched you, it was you who mattered. Always you.

I can remember when I woke up in the mornings and I could hear your little voice babbling away. Talking to your little reindeer. I miss that. I really miss that. I miss knowing that you are in the next room. I miss not being able to sneak in and just watch you sleep. I miss waiting until you were in a deep sleep and stroking your silky soft hair. I miss waiting in bed until you woke up, keeping our bed warm, so I could come and collect you. You would come into our bed every morning to start our day with cuddles. I miss talking to you and watching your face light up to the sound of my voice. I miss squidging your little cheeks and your bum. I miss not being able to soothe you and make things right. I just miss you.

But, I also miss what could have been, all the things we had planned but were never able to. As I’ve always said, what are milestones for other families are losses for us. I miss not being able to read you a bedtime story, and I miss your little face, excited for one more book. I miss not being able to teach you the alphabet and to count to ten. I miss not building sand castles with you and playing games. I miss not being able to take the first picture of you in your school uniform. I miss not being able to stick a plaster on your knee when you fell over for the first time. I miss hearing you say ‘mummy, I love you’. I miss you so much. I miss your life.

Today it has been five years since you have been gone. Five whole years, almost five times the amount of time you spent here with us. You would be six now, you would be excited about Christmas, you would be such a wonderful little boy. People think that it gets easier to live with losing you over time, this isn’t the case, you know that as I’m sure wherever you may be you see the pain that we endure. It has been five years since I last held you, since I last cuddled you when you were poorly. It has been five years since I lost myself in your beautiful big brown eyes, and it’s been five years since I was blessed with your captivating smile.

This time five years ago I found your lifeless body. This time five years ago I tried in vain so desperately to pump air back into your body, I tried so damn hard. I heard the most devastating and world shattering words anyone can hear, “I’m sorry my love, but he’s gone”. I laid on the floor next to your broken body, my cheek on yours and I begged you to wake up, knowing you never would. From the moment I called the ambulance to the moment you were pronounced dead it was 7 minutes. 7 short minutes but 7 of the longest minutes one can bear. When we eventually saw the ambulance sheet, it said “life extinct”, EXTINCT. Somehow there is more finality to that word than ‘dead’. Extinct – no longer in existence. You were gone. Forever.

In one single moment, my whole world changed. The earth shattering guttural sound that came out of my body is one that I don’t think I could replicate. I felt as though my chest was being crushed by a train, the heaviest and most suffocating weight. Death is tangible. Your death is tangible. It overshadowed any other emotion I have ever felt. It reached deep into my soul and gripped it so tightly. When I lost you, I lost myself. Ever since that moment, I have had to re-build my life, not by choice, but against my will. We did not choose this. We chose you. We gave you life. We gave you everything. And you were taken away. I had to re-learn how to be myself. I had to re-discover who I was. Your daddy and I had to embark on this indescribable journey of survival as two, not three.

What is life after loss? Life after loss is the existence that is left behind when the most significant part of your soul and your self is irreparably changed in one single second. The shell of your former self, that has been forced upon you, not chosen. Until you have children you journey through life quite happily, making choices that will best suit your desires, objectives and needs, but when two become three that changes. Your needs suddenly become the lesser of the two as your life is enveloped by this little person. Overnight you assume responsibility for a person, a little person that is wholly dependent on you; and there is no better feeling.

Simply put, I write this now because of you, the little boy who died. But I am the person I am today because of you, the little boy who lived. Your life eclipses your death, and it does so, because I will always be the person I am today because I was blessed with your life and I will share your life forevermore. You will ALWAYS matter.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

We’re running a 5KM military obstacle course… 

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This Saturday 12th March Paul, Williams daddy is running in The Major Series military obstacle course. With friends and family #teamwilliam is raising much needed funds for The UK Sepsis Trust. 

https://www.britmilfit.com/major-series/

Sepsis account for 44,000 deaths in the UK every year. That’s more than bowel cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer put together. This means that a 1 person dies from sepsis every 14 minutes. 

I hope by fundraising we can raise awareness of Sepsis, through innovation, research and the sharing of good practice. Sepsis needs to be recognised as a medical emergency and as a clinical priority for the NHS. We need to ensure that members of the public, patients and their relatives, and health professionals work together to think Sepsis. 

£85 to save a life from sepsis.

£5 provides an information booklet to relatives of ten patients admitted to ITU.

£10 will allow the Sepsis Trust to distribute 200 leaflets to a GP surgery.

£50 a month will train one team of doctors and nurse on a hospital ward.
£999 will provide one hospital with a ‘sepsis pack’ to aid implementation.
So if you’d like to sponsor Paul you can do so via Williams Just Giving page below. If everyone that reads my blog donates just £1 we could raise thousands, so please dig deep xxx

.Www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

Dearest William…

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I hope you are ok? Mummy is missing you so much. Mummy is finding it so hard at the moment, it’s so hard to live without you. It has been 15 short months since you went to live in your new home. 15 months is longer than you lived for. 15 months isn’t very long in the context of a lifetime, well not mine at least. 15 months is long enough, what is 15 years going to feel like, or 50. I hope by then I’m with you. I hate this sweetheart I really do. I can’t remember the last time I was happy. The last time I really laughed so hard. I can’t remember the last time that I didn’t have a care in the world.

Losing you is the hardest fight that I will ever have to face, and it is a fight. The constant urge of wanting and needing to give in is prevalent. I am but one breath from being with you, but that feels like a lifetime away, well it is a lifetime. It is probably a good job that we don’t have on/off switches. I would have flicked that switch a long time ago, to end this part of my life in purgatory, and to spend the rest of my time, with you. Only with you. Well not just with you, but the two other little children, who sadly, mummy didn’t get to give birth to. See, you were so special, the little one that made it. I was honoured to share my birthday with you. You couldn’t get a more perfect gift than you.

You changed my life, you changed me as a person, you see I don’t think people realise quite how much. Before you arrived I had resigned myself to a life with no children. Growing up I was fiercely independent, I knew my mind and where I wanted to be. I grew up very quickly and left my childhood behind. Nanny and grandad worked so much, every day in fact, so I spent a lot of time with your great nanny, and auntie Joyce. But I learnt how to look after myself, I worked hard as soon as I was old enough, I did well at school, but I always did my own thing. I was the only one who really exerted control over me. When I was told at 11 years old that it was unlikely I would have my own children, I planned around it, I never grew up playing with dolls or talking about children. Even nanny and grandad didn’t think I was maternal at all, throughout my pregnancy I worried I wouldn’t be good enough, I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do, and I worried that I wouldn’t be a good mum. I remember being in labour and I said to daddy “what happens if I don’t love him, what happens if he doesn’t love me?” Daddy assured me that would never happen. Daddy was right (don’t tell him I said that), for once I have no problem standing on the tallest building and shouting, your daddy was right. My goodness I have never loved anyone or anything as much as I love you, and you loved me.

I knew how special you were, I knew then. I know now. I will always know. You were the one that allowed me to lessen the grip I held on myself, you allowed me to live with more freedom, allowing myself breathing space. You taught me there was more to life than working 24/7, you taught me that it didn’t matter if filing wasn’t done the moment the bills came through the door, you taught me that it didn’t matter if the washing didn’t get done, if the dinner wasn’t on the table at 6. I had spent the day encapsulated in our bubble of love. That is the power of love. A total force of nature. You taught me to be selfless, to be patient, to be compassionate, to love with no expectations. You taught me how to live. I owe my life to you. I owe everything to you. I gave you everything I have.

Being separated from you has ignited sheer desperation, a yearning and need that I cannot fulfill, manifesting itself as pain. The price I will pay for the rest of my life for loving you so much. That pain will only increase as the love intensifies and the ache in my arms becomes heavier. At the moment I’m not living peacefully, you probably know. You can probably see my struggle. The tears, the sleepless nights, the nightmares, flashbacks and hallucinations. You probably know that I’m not working. The visions of your broken little body now not just thoughts but tricks of my mind. I don’t like it. I can’t help it, your broken little body can appear on the windowsill as I’m sat in the office working, reflections in the mirror as I look at myself, or like the other night, I woke screaming, sweating, having had your little hand drop on mine, but not your plump, dimpled little hand that I used to hold but your stiff, cold hand, the entirely different hand that I saw after you had died. Why do I experience this, I don’t know. As much as I have experienced your waking moments, I also experienced your dying ones too. I experienced your death, and as much as your little life made the biggest impact on my life, your death did to. Your life happened, but so did your death.

What am I supposed to do without you? How am I supposed to live without you? All I want to do is come home, but I am ‘home’ but I’m not, my home is with you. We should have been making memories today, you would have been making me a card at nursery, you should have been here to see me open it, and help me eat my breakfast in bed that you and daddy made. We should have gone out and filled our day with more of those infectious smiles and laughed until our cheeks hurt, making memories. I should have heard you say ‘mummy I love you’ I should have been able to say, thank you sweetheart, I love you too. But I can’t, instead I’m sat in bed looking out of the window. I can see white smoke from the chimney across the road, make its way into the dark dusky sky, wishing I was a free spirit like the smoke, making its way into the atmosphere. I just want to be free again, but until we are together again, I know I never will be. I live everyday with the guilt, guilt that I couldn’t protect you, that somehow I didn’t do enough to save you. I hope you don’t blame mummy as much as she blames herself. The thought of letting you down, leaves me barely able to live with myself, but Daddy is doing his best to look after mummy’s broken soul.

William you allowed me to see life through different eyes, you allowed me to open my eyes and experience LIFE. William, you gave me love, a love that I didn’t know existed, you gave me love that was beyond my imagination. William, you made me a mummy, you made me your mummy, thank you. Thank you for picking me. It will always be you.

As another day draws to a close without you, another mother’s day without you, one more day closer to you. I look up to the night sky and like every other evening I say to you, goodnight sweetheart, I love you. Your mummy xxx

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

 

 

 

Closure, what is that?

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“Closure” – noun

  • a feeling that an emotional or traumatic experience has been resolved.

Amongst other more trivial definitions, this is the word that is commonly used when a non-bereaved person has no idea what to say to you. At least after the funeral you might get some closure, when the inquest has finished it should give you some closure, when you have received an apology from those that failed your son, you will get some closure. Erm, no. As it says above, closure refers to the resolution of an emotional or traumatic experience. Losing a child, losing William will always leave a gaping chasm in my life that can never be resolved, fixed or even emotionally explained away. The only way to resolve my profound hurt, is for William to be alive.

The last few weeks have been a real whirlwind, what you have seen in the news, the news papers, on the internet is a representation of the way my mind is bubbling all the time. It is everything that I have been hoarding in my brain for the last 14 months, and only a small proportion of it came out in one day. It was emotionally charged and overwhelming, something that I knew I had to do. A double-edged sword. I didn’t want to be there, but I did. I didn’t want to see William’s beautiful smiling face on the TV, but I did. The most unusual bittersweet sense of pride one can feel. I didn’t want to talk about what happened to William, there’s no getting round it, and having to revisit the most traumatic day and subsequent days of my life on repeat was a difficult task to endure. But it was a sacrifice. A sacrifice I made to see my pint-sized William make a difference. And what a difference he made.

As I sit here now, finally able to sit and write, the emotions that inhibit my body, from the pit of my stomach, the waves roll through my chest, my jaw clenches as the tears flow. I have barely cried these last few weeks, well, that’s not entirely the truth, I cry everyday, I cry in the morning, some days I am already crying when I wake up. I cry in the shower, in the car, at my desk whilst writing a memo. But, I haven’t cried so loud in the shower when no-one can hear me, I haven’t cried so hard I couldn’t focus and had to stop the car. I haven’t allowed my body to let go, to heave and purge the compressed tension that sits in my soul. Initially after the media frenzy I was simply so exhausted I would just sit and stare, and then I got scared, so scared that I held it in, knowing that when it came I would not be able to control it.

But today was that day, today I opened an attachment on an email, ‘re: William Oscar Mead, Deceased’, deceased. My son is deceased. My son, my only child, my everything is dead. It is so very easy to somehow objectify your actions, to travel to London, to go on the television and talk about the failings in William’s care, so easy to talk about what needs to happen, what needs to change, to educate people and help to raise awareness of sepsis. But I did that, because my little William knows what it’s like to die, my son shouldn’t know that, and no matter how much positivity you harness, how much you empower parents, and how much awareness you raise of the catastrophic condition that took our little boys life, William is still not here. We still came back to an empty home, no mess, no toys strewn on the floor, no laughter and contagious smiles. Nothing. No William.

You get to a point, and I’m at that point where people don’t approach you with caution, people no longer ask you how you are, with a sympathetic look, worried for the answer they’ll receive. No, now, there is an expectation that when people see you that you are okay. They will ask you how your weekend was, they will engage you in conversation, or as I like to put it, small talk. My tolerance levels are no better than they were six months ago. My tolerance levels are worse, I have just become a seasoned pro at wearing the mask. When you ask me how my weekend was, it was shit. Just like every other weekend. It was shit because on Friday after work I didn’t pick William up from nursery, I didn’t flop onto the sofa with a glass of wine when William had finally succumbed to sleep. It was shit because my weekend didn’t involve trips to the park, 25 loads of washing, chasing round after a cheeky two-year old, packing him into the car with ‘plans’. I will tell you it was ‘okay’, because I can no longer be bothered to explain, people no longer really want to hear it, people are busy with their own lives, people’s lives have moved on, albeit tinged with sadness but nonetheless, their lives have evolved.

My mental health has not moved on, it has not evolved. I am no longer preparing for an inquest, I am no longer bracing myself for the next version of the NHSE report, no, I know what happened to William, although I’ve known for months, however, it is not something that I felt able or inclined to speak about publicly. We’ve had every apology we can possibly have, the doctors involved in the failings in William’s care have apologised, face to face, last week. South Western Ambulance Service (111) apologised last year. NHSE have apologised, and now Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, stood in Parliament and apologised on behalf of the NHS and the Government (see video below). But, where is William? It doesn’t bring my little boy back, it doesn’t take away the suffering he endured in those last few months, and in those last 36 hours, it doesn’t take away the guilt I feel, the blame I impose on myself, probably a form of self-harm. Control perhaps. I know it’s not my fault, I did everything I could, I sought help, I listened, I followed advice, I didn’t know what sepsis was, I didn’t know that William’s symptoms were life-threatening. But regardless it was me who took him to the people who failed my son, me. The one person that has ultimate responsibility for my son, he trusted me to protect him, trusted me to make the right decisions for him, he trusted me with his life, and as his mother I wasn’t able to do it. I was let down, let down by people and systems that are designed and are in place to help people, but until I take my last breath, the buck stops with me. No amount of changes, recommendations, lives saved, and sorry’s will ever stop me feeling that.

If you’ve ever faced a tragedy and someone tells you in any way, shape or form that your tragedy was meant to be, that it happened for a reason, that it will make you a better person, or that somehow when responsibility is taken for it, it will fix it. They are lying. Grief in all it’s forms is brutally painful. People encounter grief in many ways, when relationships fall apart, you grieve. When dreams die, you grieve. When illnesses destroy you, you grieve. These are words that I’ve uttered countless times; words that are powerful and honest they remove the foundations of anyone participating in the debasing of the grieving. Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

This video is the link to the apology William received in Parliament, if you would like to watch.

http://videoplayback.parliamentlive.tv/Player/Index/563715bb-a8f2-41fe-9f36-642d670ed991?in=2016-01-26T12%3A37%3A45%2B00%3A00&out=2016-01-26T13%3A15%3A00%2B00%3A00&audioOnly=False&autoStart=False&statsEnabled=True


www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

Donate here to save lives in Williams memory

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I suspect most of you have seen the extensive coverage we managed to achieve in Williams memory yesterday. We are unreservedly proud to be Williams parents. Please please help us save lives from Sepsis and support the UK Sepsis Trust please donate via the link below to help save a life like Wiliams. 

On behalf of My little angel in William I would like to pass on my sincere thanks to the world for supporting my mummy and daddy in sharing me with the world… Little Angel William xxxx

Www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead
Finally, after all the interviews yesterday I was told, that my dear 98 year old nan, Winnie May had passed away in the morning, she never managed to see her beautiful great grandson on the television. I’m sure, in fact I know, my beautiful nan is looking after my beautiful son in Heaven, this is for you both, with all my love and thanks, Melissa xxxx