Me and My Dad

This was Patrick's most favourite bed time story. Before too long, we were able to recite it without the book in front of us. I once used it to calm him on a flight to Germany - during landing.
It was what we recited to him the 3 nights we had him home after he died.

My Dad wakes me up
Every morning like this -
He tickles my nose and
gives me a kiss.

We go out exploring,
there's so much to see.
My Dad knows where all
the best secrets will be!

My Dad is a giant -
up here so am I!
If I stretch really hard
I can touch the sky.

We find sticky honey,
our favourite snack.
Watch my Dad run when the
bees want it back!

My Dad twirls me round
and the world whizzes past.
My head gets all dizzy,
I am spinning so fast!

If loud thunder roars
and the skies turn to grey,
My Dad keeps me safe,
Till the storm goes away.

When it's raining my Dad
plays a staying-dry trick -
To dodge all the raindrops
we have to be quick!

We race to the river
and Dad jumps straight in.
I climb on his back
and we go for a swim.

My Dad is so strong,
he can lift anything.
I hope I'm strong too when I'm
grown-up like him.

When I get sleepy,
Dad gives me a hug
And carries me home,
all cosy and snug.

My Dad tells me stories
as day turns to night.
We cuddle up close
in the twinkling light.

My Dad is the best
daddy bear there could be.
We're together for ever -
my Dad and me.

Alison Ritchie

It's upsetting to have had to pull out the book to take down the text now because I've forgotten a fair bit of it. It's upsetting to think we're forgetting. Forgetting these little details that meant and mean so much. And knowing he did not get enough of this - the hugs, the stories, the adventures, the ordinary - the time spent with his Daddy and me.

Miss you lots - Sproggy-pops.💔

Unhinged

Life as we knew it changed on Jan 25th 2011. We were thrown off course onto a new trajectory, a new and uncharted course. We are following this new path and with time, we learnt to live again. With the loss, the absence, the grief: the general weirdness of life with loss.

I may even look like a perfectly functioning human being on the outside and am almost fooled into believing I am one myself at times...

Until something small comes along; something so inconspicuous that yet somehow manages to temporarily unhinge me.

These moments teach me that it sometimes really does not take much to scratch the surface and hit a nerve.

Some things have become more difficult for me since Patrick's death. Some easier. Some have become more important, some less important.

I am still, after 8 years, getting to know the new me.

I lose patience more easily - with myself and others. Frustratingly, that also includes those nearest and dearest like Pat and the kids.
It's harder to stay focused and concentrated some times. I do not have the same capacity for pressure and stress.
There is an almost constant ball of anxiety in me other times, a nervous restlessness I am finding hard to describe.

I try very hard to live the best life that I can for Patrick and for me...doing things with the kids and Pat, creating memories, looking after myself. But that in itself can sometimes be exhausting...to keep going, to keep pushing myself, to keep getting up, to keep making the most out of the time we have...

Until something comes along that temporarily upends me and makes me want to pull the duvet over my head and ignore the world around me.

I crash and burn.

Over the years, I have figured out what I need to do to stay sane and know that occasionally, these needs change. So the importance of self-care is not a concept that is foreign to me.

These days, my souls craves nature and the feeling of the wind and/or sun (hell, even the rain!) in my face as I am out walking somewhere, almost literally drinking in the scenery, landscape, sounds and smells around me. I crave both solitude and company; at the same time and in equal measures. I crave long chats and sitting in silence. I crave stability and a sense of belonging.

That sense of belonging is something that I am struggling with, of late.

I feel out of sorts and a bit lost.

After a big-ish birthday earlier this year, the realisation is creeping in that our daughter is very likely the last baby of my own I will have held. Life is exhausting and busy so for the most part,  I am perfectly ok with that but I think a part of me is grieving the end of that stage of our lives and knowing there should be three.

Back to school time can be difficult too. Some years I am OK but others I find harder. Patrick would be 10 this year and as we saw Eoghan off into 2nd class today, I could not help but to also feel Patrick's absence with all the what-could-have-been's that come with it.

Lately, curiosity has sent me off trying to find out more about my side of the family. Names, dates, places of the people that came before me. Who were they. What were they like? How did my great-grandparents feel about seeing not one but two world wars in their life time? Most of those questions I will never have answers to but I want to make sure that our kids have some idea of where they came from before more of those details get lost in time.

I have spent more time living here than in Germany and as much as I call my house here in Limerick my home, my roots are my family home in Germany. It's the house my great-grandfather built and that our family have lived in for the past 100 years. I have not lived there in 22 years but sometimes, I feel lost between those two places. Home and home-home.

Not really truly belonging to either.

At the start of this week, I picked up a book I was loaned. The first one in ages. "The Choice" by Edith Eger. A highly recommended read, actually. One of the quotes that stood out for me, is this one:

“Sometimes our pain pushes us, and sometimes our hope pulls us.” 

I believe sometimes our pain and our hope work hand in hand and so we stumble along...to the best of our ability.

2019 Great Limerick Run - Milestones ...

It is a year of big birthdays all around in the extended family and friends. We have 30th, 40th, 50th, 70th and should be having a 10th.

On April 5th, Patrick would be turning 10. As we have done for the past 8 years, it will be us blowing out the candle on a cake he will not be able to taste himself.

In honour and in memory of his older brother, Eoghan will be walking the 10km stretch of the Great Limerick Run with me this year. 1km for each one of the 10 years that will have passed since Patrick was born.

This year, we dedicate the Stroll For Sproggy to the The Children's Grief Centre, a Limerick based charity that offers support for children and teenagers who experience grief through death, separation or divorce. We feel it is a hugely important and worthwhile service as children's grief can often be overlooked while at the same time being quite complex. Children sometimes need help in learning to navigate their feelings surrounding their grief and receiving compassionate one on one support can be of immeasurable help to them.

Eoghan's sense of loss must feel quite strange to him as he is grieving for something and someone he never had in his life. He feels genuine upset and loss for not having his big brother around but at the same time feels genuine love and affection for someone he has never met. How confusing must that be for someone so young.

Being only 7, we think he is showing great determination in committing to walking the whole 10km.

How challenging it must occasionally be for him to be "the rainbow".

He is a little brother with none of the big brother protection, banter and fighting that other kids have.
He is an odd kind of middle child.
He is a big brother.

He is the most amazing big brother our daughter could ever wish for. He will have her back and takes her bossing him around in his stride.

I hope we are doing him justice by raising him in a way that is not making him feel like he is existing in the shadow of this person who came before him and who died in such a sudden, unexplained way. That is our challenge.

Though we tell him often, I hope one day he reads this and truly realises just how wonderful he is.

And I hope we can help him raise some funds for this amazing charity.

Please consider visiting our fundraising page here: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/11375859_a-stroll-for-sproggy---in-aid-of-children-s-grief-centre.html

Walk With Me

Dear Sproggy,

Can I share something with you?
I've always somewhat envied those who can say with such certainty that they can feel their loved ones around them wherever they are. Those, who say they get 'signs' or have even more tangible experiences.

Sure, there are those special visiting robins that make me think you are coming to say hello but I have had very few times where I can truly say that I could feel your presence.

I remember the first time, probably during the first year after your died. We were in the car on the way back from Corbally and just about coming up to the graveyard. You used to have a certain way of putting your little head on my lap when I was sitting on the couch and sitting in the car's passenger seat, I could almost feel the weight of it in that familiar spot.

I suppose it made me quite sad at the time. The loss was so recent and raw and I remember wishing that I could reach down and feel those curls or reach behind me to tickle those chubby legs dangling off the car seat.

Now, 8 years have passed almost in the blink of an eye. The loss is not as recent but as raw as ever when I stop and think, really, think about it all. It feels as surreal, as nightmare-ish. No amount of time can ever heal that kind of trauma - though we have learnt to live with it in our lives.

Our lives; our crazy busy, rich lives; full of memories; of happy and of sad times. All throughout you are remembered and you are missed. Eoghan misses his big brother, though he never got to meet you. I can hear him telling Caoilfhionn about you to make sure she knows all about her big brother, too.

Along the way, I suppose I accepted that those kinds of special experiences are perhaps not meant for me and that was OK, too.

It was such a special feeling so, when, as I was out walking a few weeks back, I suddenly sensed you pulling up beside me and walk with me. Not your little 22 month old self, but an older version. Blonde curls, almost shoulder height to me, lanky and lively, in an odd way. You stayed with me for a good stretch of my walk, in a kind of a silent conversations, and your presence seemed to be really reassuring even though I wasn't able to make out the details of your face.

It was a surprise, too, because it happened so out of the blue, so randomly, on a bog-standard, ordinary, grey evening. Not on a special mountain-top or beside the vast roaring sea. Just along the Dooradoyle Road with cars driving past. A walking route, that, perhaps, was very familiar to you and I both.

Or maybe my subconscious just really needed your quiet reassurance. I don't know.

Not long after this, I got a strong sense of your presence again. I was trying to rest or sleep and that time, you definitely had been on my mind. And I was sad. But just then I felt as though you were there beside me again; your older self; resting your hand on my shoulder.

Those are the only times so far that I can truly say I really felt you there with me. Perhaps it was all in my head - but do you know what?

It gave me a huge sense of peace and something I never thought I would get: A tiny imagined glimpse of an older you.

So, walk with me. Anytime. Anywhere. Walk by my side.

The Lonely Years That Follow

Just a little over 7 years ago,  I wrote about how Time Flew coming up to Patrick's first anniversary.

It was scary, how quickly that first year went by. Reading back, I had a lot of worries about the passage of time and forgetting.

It is crazy how fast the years have gone by. We will soon be looking at a full decade here. 10 frigging years! How is that even possible?

So what is it like 7 years on from that post?

Well, I recently came across an article on on Facebook (Mitchell's Journey) in which a dad shared his thoughts on grieving and bereavement following the death of his son Mitchell. This below paragraph absolutely resonated with me.

"I’ve said this often: death is the easy part, it’s the aftermath that’s hardest. So, when you see someone who's lost someone – know that they’ll need your love, compassion, and empathy gently at the funeral and the months to come – but more profoundly in the lonely years that follow.

I’ll repeat the last part: they’ll need your love more profoundly in the lonely years that follow."

The lonely years that follow.

Everybody moves forward with their lives. Including oneself. Slowly, you learn to live with the trauma, the memories, the flashbacks, the triggers, the miss. You return to being a pretty well-functioning human - at least most of the time. Needs must and all of that. This process can be exhausting and lonely though.

As the years tick by, there are two dates in our calendar that become so, so important. Birthday and anniversary. People remembering those and telling you about it can literally be a life-line. A reassurance that he is not fading from memory but remembered no matter how many years have passed. I love hearing little stories people remember or how his name still comes up in conversation with some of my friends' children. It is lovely to know their parents are keeping Patrick alive in their lives, answering question and recounting memories. It is humbling to think that even though they are little themselves, Patrick means something to them - perhaps in a slightly abstract way but all the same.

Over the years, grief, ever-lurking on the sidelines, often strikes unexpectedly and manages to take your breath away all over again. Anytime, anywhere. Whenever you may find yourself believing you have become a seasoned pro at this grief-lark, it pounces; ready to teach you a lesson. But you keep fighting and living and loving.

The love for your child does not change because they died. It remains as strong as the first and last time you held them.

You will never stop grieving for them just as you will never stop loving them.