Tag Archives: mental health

My way of being Williams mum

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“Parenting a child that isn’t here is infinitely harder,
 than parenting a child that is”

When William died I can remember coming home for the first time since I had carried him out of our house when he had passed away. What I came home to was silence, but that silence was so deafening, the silence pierced every thought and I wasn’t able to escape from it.

William was still wholly dependent on me when he died. He was only one. We had gone from a flurry of nappies and being late for everything to silence and having nowhere to go.

The first year after William died was pure survival, just to exist was difficult, to exist in a world that William no longer lived in. Every single second, minute, hour and day was painful. Physically painful. I had to survive to find out what had happened to William, I had to endure an inquest, I had to hear those words ‘with better care William could have and should have survived’. If it wasn’t painful enough already, that twisted the knife that was permanently lodged in my heart.

When William first passed away I lost count of the times that people used the phrase ‘time heals’. Well-meaning people, not quite knowing what to say, trying their best to help, to say something, anything. At the time my response, perhaps not out loud but definitely in my head was that nothing can ever heal the death of your child; and I still stand by that. Time doesn’t heal but it does allow you to learn how to live again and I guess in a way that is healing.

As the time passes though you feel isolated as if you are in a different life from everybody else. When William first died my whole world stopped, and so did everyone else’s around us, but although tinged with sadness, people’s lives inevitably return to normal. They had to work, had their own families to look after, whilst we were just stuck. For the first-year people will look at you with that tilted head and enquiring face, taking extra care with how they ask how you are but as time passes greetings return to normal, well the way they were before William died. They stop asking how you are, genuinely wondering about how things are to fleeting acknowledgments.

After a while I had a stock answer, “yeah I’m ok, yano” and do a little tilt of my head, the conversation quickly changes to something trivial, something that is happening in the now. I’m okay with this now. Every time that I bump in to someone I don’t want to have to say well actually, when I woke up this morning William was still dead and I’ve still got to endure another day without his cuddle, his smile, his touch, his everything.

Dead.

That word, the word that everyone is afraid to use. A cold, hard, definitive word that no one likes to use. It’s strange because when William first died, I would tell people that he was dead, but after a month or so it changed to much softer phrases such as passed away, died, fell asleep, you name it, anything to avoid that word.

People are afraid of death, people are afraid of talking about dying, death and the dead. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe its fear, maybe its ignorance of not knowing what to say in response, but whatever it is I find myself softening how I talk about William’s death so as not to make the other person feel awkward. When I talk about William’s death on a pre-planned platform, such as the recent HSJ Patient Safety Congress it gives me the arena in which to express the cold, stark nature that his loss represents. I do wonder perhaps without the sepsis campaigning where my mental health would be. For me I find that campaigning is my way of somehow being William’s mum in the present, here and now.

When he died I had no nappies to change, no bottles or food to make, the mounds of washing soon depleted. In fact I didn’t wash William’s clothes that hadn’t already been washed. There was nothing, the investigation into his death soon took up most of my time, but once this had, thankfully concluded there was a deep chasm in which I needed to ‘do’ something. This is where my campaign journey began, my desire to ensure that no other parent has to endure the indescribable pain of losing their child or a child that has to lose a parent when it could be avoided.

Campaigning has helped me, it has been my way of grieving. It has not just been a time investment for me, but every time I stand up and open up my soul, it is an emotional investment for me. The moment I say ‘thank you for listening’ the emotional hangover starts. I think to be honest the part of me that I can no longer give to William, I give to others. It helps me and I hope it helps them.

My most important job will always be mummy to two beautiful boys.

William and Arthur.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

My worst enemy is my memory…

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William would be four this year. We would be planning his transition to pre-school. Buying him his first little uniform. We would be watching him play and encourage his little brother, perhaps having a calming effect, perhaps feeding his boisterous side; we will never know. We would have to keep reminding him to be quiet, be careful not to wake your little brother. So many things that we should be doing, but we’re not.

Everyday is full of moments, where we are stuck in a time, a time where life stood still. The only way I can explain what it is like to live with losing a child is like being on a train. You can see life, almost reach out and touch it but you have to mind the step. There is something permanent between you and it. Sometimes you sit, motionless from behind a pane of glass, taking in all that is going on around you, sensitive to your surroundings, hyper-sensitive, noises, colours, movements, proving all too much. Other times you sit back and watch it whizzing by, knowing that you can’t get off, you are in transit, your world is moving, but you are stationary, perfectly stationary. I feel as though I am a ghost. I can see in, but people can’t see me.

Sometimes I’m strong enough to stand and get off at the stations. Step over the gap. Feel the rush of air in my hair. Be a part of life. I think taking part gets easier with time, I suppose more experienced with the grief. Perhaps recognising your personal cues, noticing subtle changes in your mood, your  motivation, knowing when rough times are coming, eventually you learn that your train is waiting, all you have to do is get back on it when your knees buckle. And they do buckle. Sometimes I have a bad week, and I put one in front of the other just for one solitary ‘good’ day.

Every time I sit in front of a camera and talk about William, about his death, about how much it hurts to miss him, it takes days, sometimes weeks of sitting in my carriage on that train to prepare. My eyes shut, feet firmly rooted to the floor, preparing. Preparing to relive, preparing to reignite that fear, those emotions, and go ‘there’. But it doesn’t quite compare, it doesn’t even come close to what I had to endure today.

You know when you have children and all of a sudden a switch is flicked over, it is no longer about you, but this tiny, fragile, human being you have created, and the FEAR. People try to explain the fear to you, an emotion like no other, a feeling of complete helplessness, like you are living in constant dread that something bad is going to happen to your little bundle of joy, every time the phone rings and it flashes up ‘nursery’, you fear the worst. Every time they step outside, within 3 seconds you have visualised every possible option of what could go wrong. The cars, falling debris, is there anything they could potentially trip on, eat? anything? maybe a piano might fall out of the sky and land on them? irrational, I know, but we have all been there. That feeling of not having total control over our little ones, even worse knowing they have no fear, leaping around the front room like they’re in mortal combat, but what we see is mortal danger. Now imagine all those fears being realised. That moment, when completely out of your control, their life is taken, snuffed out in one single heartbeat, not because you put them in harm’s way but because those that were supposed to relinquish the danger, increased it. Because their incompetence led to your child taking their last breath at the tender age of one. That fear is no longer a fear, but reality.

Now I know, I know what it is like to live the unimaginable, the pain that just cannot be expelled. I know what it is like to live without my child, I know what it is like to have stretch marks, but no baby to cradle in my arms. I know what it is like to go in to hospital with my baby and to walk away broken, leaving my baby behind. I know what it is like to wake every morning, knowing I will never see, hold, touch, smell, kiss or soothe my baby to sleep ever again. Ever.

Now imagine living like that and then adding another baby into the mix. All the fear that I experienced first time round with William is now tangible, it is no longer fear to me but a plausible, possible outcome. It is almost an expectation. In 52 days Arthur will be 382 days old, the age William was when he lost his life. I feel completely and fully committed to the belief that Arthur is on loan, that in 52 days he will be taken away, and it is soul-destroying. No one can convince me otherwise, no one can assure me that Arthur won’t die, no one has that power. No amount of counselling, EMDR, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, writing, talking or other form of therapy will make me feel any differently; and if Arthur reaches 383 days old I am of the belief that it is borrowed time.

Arthur is now the same size that William was, he sleeps in the same positions and like most infants is living with an insufferable cold. Par for the course when they start nursery, multiple children together is like a germ fest, but you can’t stop them living, socialising and growing up. Arthur has been suffering with a cold for nearly four weeks now. It has been worse at times and I have taken him to the doctors on several occasions. I knew that it was viral and not bacterial but I feel reassured knowing that his throat, ears and chest were clear. Towards the end of last week his little cough had become worse but during the night he became a little wheezy, and the next morning it seemed worse so we called 111. We saw a doctor and he was prescribed antibiotics. Arthur napped at lunch time but when he woke he just didn’t seem himself and he had a temperature. We called 111 and they sent a paramedic. This paramedic determined based on Arthur’s observations that an ambulance should come to take Arthur to hospital. Arthur’s temperature was 39.1c, he started to vomit and his respiratory rate was double what it should be. He was just not himself at all.

I was already panicking and experiencing flashbacks from the paramedics being in our front room. The big, bright yellow wagon parked outside, just like when William died, blocking the road; a paramedic car too. It just haunted me. The equipment, the vocabulary, the dark green uniform. I knew Arthur was not seriously unwell, I knew he was ‘safe’ to some extent, but what I wanted was for them to go and revive my other baby, who I imagined to be lying on his nursery floor, dead. it took all my might to convince myself he was not there. The mind is a dangerous and powerful entity. You may not see it on the outside but if you could just see inside you would see torment.

Every single second of being conveyed to hospital in an ambulance was agonising. Cradling my little baby, one who looks so similar to William, sat on the same trolley’s, in an ambulance that looked identical, on the same route, the same visuals, the same sounds. As I sat there cradling Arthur I closed my eyes, and I smelled his hair, the same, sweet strawberry smell as William. Knowing that Arthur was safe, I wished and prayed so hard that the tiny little poorly baby I was cradling was William, that he was alive, that what happened on the 14th December 2014 was a nightmare and I was now waking up. But it wasn’t.

I will never wake up from that nightmare, but what is certain is that everyday there are triggers; reminders that force me back there, and I don’t want to go back there, but I have no choice. You see, living the way I live isn’t a choice, it is something that I must bear, I’m fed the tools with which I must rebuild my life. It is not how I want it, nor how I planned it. It is something that changes daily and no matter how much I fight grief I cannot change it. I must embrace all the changes that each day brings. I feel safe in the knowledge that with every step I take it is one step closer to my little William.

One Step Closer…

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

PTSD and me

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Today as I stepped out of bed on day 550 without you I looked out of the window for some inspiration. I didn’t find any.

There is no one day easier than another, I am yet to wake up any morning and think, well I don’t miss you as much today. My thoughts are always with you. My tears are all for you. I suspect you can see mummy from the little white fluffy cloud on which you now reside; but I know if you can see your mummy you’ll also know that she can’t help it. I have long since given up thinking that time heals, that one day I’ll come to terms with losing you. Simply, I won’t, how can I?

More than ever I can’t cope with knowing that I couldn’t save you. You didn’t deserve this. You deserved the world. You deserved to be happy. You deserved the chance to live your life how you chose. Your life so cruelly taken away from you by others. Maybe that day they went into work with something on their mind, perhaps they were tired. But you gave your life for their mistakes, there is no bigger sacrifice, and if mummy could she would give everything for you to have breath back in your broken little body.

Sweetheart, I think that some people think that after 550 days I should be functioning better, that I should be capable of getting through a day without breaking down. Or that perhaps I shouldn’t be as vulnerable and fragile as I am. I don’t think anyone will ever understand the path that I tread. It is not a path that anyone else can say they have been on, after all, only I know my pain of losing you. Daddy treads his own path, others tread different paths. But no one treads mummy’s path.

The moment that mummy heard those words ‘I’m sorry my love, but he’s gone’ my life changed irrevocably. There was no going back, no going back to the normal life we had created together. No more cosy morning snuggles, no watching you point your toes and jiggle your little feet when you are excited, no sneaking into your room in the night to stroke your silky soft hair. Mummy used to do that, you probably knew that, but you let me, because you know mummy needed to. What I would do to just hold you one more time.

Some people don’t understand that by the time I have managed to dress myself in the morning, I have already been awake crying for several hours, if I’ve been to sleep at all. Some people don’t understand that some days fast movement, lots of noise or colour gives me a sensory overload. Trying to explain to someone why I’m so hypersensitive is virtually impossible, let alone trying to explain how the flashbacks cripple me. You see people don’t understand PTSD, people think I should stop thinking about it. How can I? Could they? I don’t think so, not if they had witnessed losing you. I can’t stop thinking about it, I don’t have a choice. PTSD isn’t simply a memory recollection, something you can summon and then change to think about something completely different. When my brain decides, I will re-live the moment that I found you again. Frozen in bed, not being able to move, paralysed by fear, in my mind, you are next door, in your cot, passed away. Somehow the light, the sounds, the smells are the same. It is that morning again. I can’t remember how many hours I sat cross-legged on your floor, hands tightly gripping the bars of your cot, head pressed against the bars so hard there were two lines on my forehead, staring, my eyes pleading with the spot where you took your last breath, pleading for you to not be there, not like that, not again. I think it took 6 hours for my brain to realise that you weren’t there. For those 6 hours in my mind I had been staring at your broken little body. But of course you weren’t there. Try telling my mind that. It is like being trapped in a nightmare, not able to wake up because of course you are already awake. Being suffocated by the nightmare as you have no idea that it isn’t real or that it isn’t really happening again.

PTSD is so debilitating. I don’t get a choice, I can’t just not think about ‘it’. The trauma of losing you so vivid, mummy is forced to re-live losing you all over again, I can’t help it. It’s not just a memory, it’s not something that I can distract myself from. It is not something that I can explain to people unless of course they have experienced it. They do not understand that one minute you are seemingly ok and confident to the next minute being scared to exist in what is a co-dependent bubble. And when it strikes it is like having a wound re-opened, and left constantly open. Social situations are a no go area, draining, emotionally exhausting, overwhelming, frozen and incapable of functioning. In a nutshell PTSD is not being able to differentiate in your mind the past, the present and the future.

I wish people would be patient, I wish people would not judge. I wish I didn’t have to keep justifying how and why I feel like I’m in a sinking abyss. No one will ever understand the pain of losing you, a life sentence, one that will not be over until I take my last breath and we are together again.

You will never know sweetheart how much mummy needs you. You changed my life, mummy is so blessed that you picked me. I sit here looking at your photo’s, your captivating smile, your sparkling eyes coming alive from every photo. You probably see mummy touch your photos, hoping that she can feel you chubby soft skin once more; but I never will. I remember the last time I ever held you. I traced every inch of your little body with my finger, my eyes closed, assigning every little fold and crease to memory. Even then, twenty days after you had passed away you were still perfect. God, mummy misses you so much. People just don’t get it. It just does not get easier.

So, my message to the lovely people who I encounter every day in my life, please don’t judge, don’t criticise, be patient, be calm, be respectful and most of all, give me time. I estimate it will take a lifetime.

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

My inspiration for 2016 – William

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My boy and I

My boy and I

As the evening draws in and darkness approaches, I say goodbye to 2015, but I do not welcome 2016. For I would not have cuddled my baby in 2016. This year I didn’t hold my baby alive, and next year I would not have held him at all. Although William lived for 382 days, he did not live one full calendar year.

Not only does today represent the end of a very hard and very painful year, today marks 382 days without my baby. William has been gone the same number of days today as we were blessed with him. How does that seem possible? The most exhilarating and amazing 382 days, compared to the most harrowing 382 days. I simply cannot make sense of it, I still cannot understand, accept or seemingly learn to live with it. I’m happy with that, right now, I don’t want to. Why should I? Losing William has enriched my life with the ability to see past what most people understand as a ‘good life’. To really understand the depth of love is to lose it, not until after you lose it do you realise how much you relied upon that love. How much you needed that love. How much you needed that person.

Earlier, I sat and thought to myself, ‘you’re not even 30 and you’ve outlived your child’. I sat in William’s room and looked at his tiny little clothes, thinking how small they would look next to him now had he been here. His room should not be tidy, it should be cluttered with his toys. His cot should be a bed. His changing mat replaced with a potty. Our home is stuck in a particular time. A time that stood still the moment William took his last breath. Will that change? I don’t know, not yet, I don’t want it to. William’s high chair is still in the kitchen, his cups and beakers are still in the cupboard, his cereals still stand on his shelf along with his other food bits. Well past their sell by date, but somehow to get rid of these would be like somehow getting rid of a piece of William. I am not ready for that separation yet. William’s pram is by the front door, the stones in the wheels from the last time it was used. His little coat still hangs on its peg and his toys still have pride of place in the front room. His car seat still adorns the back seat; every time I look in the rear view mirror I see it and it makes me smile. Imagining catching his eye as I drove along, his little face would burst into the biggest smile, babbling away, deep in conversation with himself after nursery. The replacement beaker still stands on my bedside table from the night he died, in case he needed another. The beaker that he last drank from in his cot is where he left it, the last thing he ever touched. I sometimes pick it up and place my fingers round the handles, knowing his chubby little fingers gripped this very handle. Knowing that his touch was once here. I still haven’t washed his handprints from the inside of my bedroom window. An ever lasting reminder that ‘William was here’. His toys are still in the bath and his toothbrush and toothpaste still in their little pot. For us, nothing has changed, our life hasn’t moved on, our life at a standstill, forever waiting, but I know we’ll be waiting a lifetime, William’s sweet giggle won’t ever resonate through our house again, his cheeky grin won’t fill my rear view mirror and his little fingers won’t ever hold that beaker again.

Some might say that we struggle to move on because we keep those things in their places, but that is not true, William was and still is a part of this household and this family. I need William’s things around me, to look at, to touch and hold, sometimes I remember a different memory and it makes me smile. Time does not heal, whoever said that was so very wrong, time may give you the ability to live a different life but it does not heal the gaping chasm that William has left. The scar tissue has not begun to form. I have no protection from falling in that pit. As time passes my flashbacks and PTSD seem to be increasingly more and more crippling. I don’t need triggers, those thoughts, visions and memories are right there, right in the forefront of my mind. This is what grief really does to you. There is no let up. It does not discriminate. It holds you firmly in its grip. Am I depressed? Yes, clinically so. Do I take medication to help me sleep, to stave away the crippling symptoms of anxiety, to help lift my mood, to help discourage suicidal ideation? Yes. Do I have a drink? Yes, just like you I have shit days, sometimes things go wrong, normal things, like the washing machine that William decided he needed in heaven on Christmas Eve. Do I struggle to get out of bed? Yes. Do I struggle to concentrate? Yes. Do I struggle to remember things? Yes. Do I struggle to go out, to be motivated? Yes. Do I care? No. I am simply a machine. I plug myself in at the end of the day, I recharge and get up and do my jobs the next day. Do I do them with conviction? No. Do I do them with care? No. Do I do them because I want to? No. Do I do them with hope? No. Am I worried? No. This is life. This is the card that I have been dealt, but goodness me, I’m in better shape than William is. His little life snuffed out because people did not do what they were supposed to do.

This year I have been well and truly submerged against my will into everyone’s worst nightmare. The terror that runs through my veins, the fear that makes my heart beat, very few people have experienced and I’m thankful for that. My eyes have been opened to a world of mental health that I only knew existed in the media. Don’t walk around with your eyes closed, make eye contact with people on the bus, the tube or walking down the street. If someone drops something, help them to pick it up. If someone elderly say hi, say hello back. Take the time to love, because you don’t know however small these little gestures are to you, to someone else they will be the highlight of their day or week. For someone else you can bring joy and comfort. Not just family and friends but strangers. Life is too short, I know this, you know this, please don’t walk around with your head down, rushing everywhere. Don’t sit on the bus on your phone, say hi. Give that homeless person a sandwich and a hot drink. Pick up the phone to your elderly relatives whom you rarely speak to, they won’t be there forever, they helped create the world that you live in today. You are their inspiration, be someone else’s. Most importantly. Look at your child and know, really know that you are their world. So make sure they know that they are yours.

My life is run on passion and love and drive and determination, my life is run simply on my resounding, unwavering love for William. He is my guiding light. He is my hope. He is what drives me, knowing I must get the answers, knowing I must fight for him, knowing that I will never settle for anything less than the truth. My life is not run on hope for the future, nor happiness but a bittersweet necessity to share my son with the world.

To be blessed with William, was to be blessed with love. My life furnished with everything it could ever possibly need and more. I cannot even begin to put in to words the sheer desperation I have to be with my son. The only hope I have is that is not too far away, hard I know, but the truth. But for now, my only wish for 2016 is that everyone will learn what really happened to William and what should have happened and in doing so educate themselves about sepsis and hope that those that made mistakes never make them again.

For now, I say goodbye to the last year that I ever held my child. Something I don’t want to do, but of course, no one can stop time. If they could I would have stopped it a long time ago. My wish for all of you in 2016 is that it brings you as much comfort as you have all brought me in 2015. That it brings you time with your loved ones that cannot be replaced. Love, learn and be inspired. William is my inspiration. My life and my love.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead