Written in 2014
Dear Heather,
You’ll never realise what a thrill your arrival was in May 1993, two years to the week after your brother’s appearance. You were ‘number three’ following an initial late stillbirth trauma, so you too were special. Suddenly our family was a neat foursome and we felt complete.
Your older brother bonded with you straight away and became your constant companion. It was a joy to hear your everyday banter and squeals coming from different corners of the house or garden. There was the occasional scrap, but these were few and far between, and defending one another in our chaotic child-filled road came perfectly naturally to you both.
Before I’d blinked, I was frantically wiping your freckled face and brushing your beautiful thick auburn hair, before shuffling you off to primary school with your favourite rucksack and gym kit. A handful of close friends prompted plenty of sleepovers. You were so proud of your new Brownie uniform and you loved the weekly shot of enthusiastic activity, as much as I loved sewing on your badges. Having been packed off to boarding school and without sisters, I particularly looked forward to sharing normal girlish experiences with you – fashion fun, chick lit laughs, relationship advice, confidence boosting, dreams. I wanted to teach you the joys of dressmaking, to hear the crisp slicing of scissors on fabric and the comforting whirl of a sewing machine.
All four grandparents doted on you. The Scots were far away, but your works of art covered their kitchen walls, and you wore many a homemade winter woolly from north of the border. I hope you remember the cottage holidays nearer to home. I recall Granny tucking you into bed one night saying, “Oh, she gives you such hope”. The significance of those few words came back to haunt me within a horribly short space of time.
Our grief commenced on the first day of your diagnosis, leukaemia. We hid it well, though we prayed, hoped and fought tooth and nail for your survival. You were a star patient and withstood the nine months rollercoaster of your treatment with fortitude and courage far beyond your eight years.
There are a thousand angst words I could use to describe the turmoil of what remained of our lives after your cataclysmic departure, but hurt – deep, deep hurt says it all. It was unspeakable that you’d been robbed of your life at that age, and unspeakable that we, and indeed the world, had been robbed of you. Your absence was inconceivable. There was no childish humming coming from your room or springy footsteps on the stairs, and no Minnie the Mouse T-shirt in the weekly wash. There was a vacant seat at the kitchen table and in the car. I wept over corn-on-the-cob in the supermarket because only you and I had a liking for it. We were half a family now, so holidays weren’t holidays any more and returning home only emphasised the vacuum. Above all I missed your gentle smile, your sense of fun, your optimism, your shrewd intelligence … your being.
Almost inevitably, your ‘disappearance’ caught up on your brother, and years of complex health issues ensued with a vengeance, some of which we still confront today, but there is no medicine for such an immeasurable loss.
You missed your brother’s 21st and now unbelievably, you are not here for yours. Your cousins and loyal friends would have leapt to celebrate with us. They are rightly absorbing life’s opportunities – travel, university, relationships, but time has not faded their memories of you. There’ll be no special birthday cake this year, but there’ll always be an inextinguishable candle burning for you.
There is an unfillable void in our lives but deep down I know you wouldn’t have wanted the rest of our days to be wrecked by your absence. I didn’t want your spirit to die just because your body had failed. You inadvertently left us so much, which is why we intentionally choose to live, laugh and love in memory of you.
Happy 21st darling,
Love Mum x
