I’m doing that, because I don’t really have the spare energy to write the awful. How many times can you write “My son is dead”? How many times can I look at a post and think “I wrote about him,” “I didn’t write about him,” “I cried today,” “I didn’t cry today”.

Grief, this grief, goes something like this. A noise, an explosion, something dreadful that scares you to the pit of your stomach, goes off behind you and you start to run. Run, run, run. Run away from seeing the destruction. Run away from seeing the gore. Run from the despair. Run from the fear and the pain and the hurt.

To start with you just run, thinking that since your legs are still working, it can’t be that bad. Perhaps you can get far enough away that the smoke and the screams and the smell won’t be able to catch you. Run so that the sight of it all, when you look, will be muted by distance and your other senses will not contribute from the horror of it all.

Run, in my case, clutching the hands of your children, pulling them along so that they don’t see either. Try not to notice that there are not enough hands to hold them all and get them safely away.

Eventually though, not matter how strong you are, your body cannot run any more. Legs will cramp, lungs will hurt, skin is hot and cold and clammy.

Last week I reached the point where I couldn’t run further. My legs gave up, my throat tasted of blood, my lungs didn’t even want to go in and out any more. At that point, the floor, the dirt and the dust, was all there was. Curl in a ball, taste the metal in my mouth, feel the muscles turn to string.

I think now, nearly 4 months on, I’m almost at the point where I’m going to have to turn around and look. I think when I do, I’m maybe going to find out that, like in a dream, I have run nowhere at all. It’s all right there, just as horrible and desperate as it was.

Losing a child isn’t a big thing, it is a million small things. It’s having to look at everything in your life through a new lens. Look at each thing again as if for the first time. Each child, each place, each person, each day, each event. Each relationship. Every thing you ever loved, ever did, ever enjoyed. Each thing anew “not with Freddie”.

It is very, very hard.

I’ve made PoP a page on facebook, which you can find by clicking on the widget to the right and “like” if you choose. I’ve been thinking about the way my blog feeds into Facebook and wondering if it is a bit invasive for the people who follow me but maybe don’t want to read it, so I might make the page carry the blog with some occasional odds and sods sent directly to it too. It’s all part of a greater plan but I’d be happy to have some followers for the page.

We’ve made it to £1000 on our JustGiving page in memory of Freddie. That was my first target.

Thank you to everyone, friend, family, reader and customer who has contributed to this and also to the suppliers who donated items to go direct to the hospital, a batch of which went off this week and will hopefully be well received by babies, parents, siblings and children in the kids ward. We’ve got a batch of money directly from customers who contributed their free gifts to the fund but we have to find out from the accountant how to do that before we add it (oh for the olden days!)

Knowing something good has come out of Freddie’s life and that SCBU at Hinchingbrooke has benefited in some way, has really helped.

The page stays open for 5 years and I really hope much more, from anything else we do, will go into it in that time.

Zoe and i commenced “the plan” today, working our way around Fran, Skye and Amelie going to a workshop with Tim Noble at their dance school.

While they were out, we got the others working with a fairly intensive day looking at the art of Kandinsky with the help of a rather fab book from Usborne which looks at an artist and then gives a project to do, inspired by one of the works of art. We hooked up a laptop to one side too which meant we could flick through various others of his pieces. I hope the children were inspired; Zoe and I certainly were!

Zoe read to them first and then I had printed out some worksheets on the colour wheel and primary, secondary and tertiary colours. We got them to colour these in first, looking at how it worked (brainstretch alert!) and then talked about contrasting and complementary colours and groups of shades and tones. We touched on light having different primary colours and used the keyboard to try playing notes and seeing what colour they made us think of. (This worked better with the younger ones).

Once they’d got their brains thinking in colour, we set about three versions of the Concentric Circle Picture.

Firstly, we folded paper so it was in 6 squares and got them to decorate each box differently, thinking about the colours. We used my much beloved gel pens for this, which have been worth their weight in gold. We’ve had masses of use out of them over the last few weeks.

Once they’d done this, we got them to do a larger version using poster paints, mainly for the fun of splodgy paint, which we don’t use nearly enough. (Poor Josie!) This went down very well. Liked those pots of paint very much; quite dinky, so seemed to inspire them to be neat but covered the paper very well. We did both of these on coloured sugar paper.

Lastly, we used proper oil pastels and drew a final set of circles and then washed over them with water colours. Loved the effect of this; very clean and different to the other looks.

After that we dashed off to see the girls do their dance. Fran had obviously had a ball, Amelie looked a bit scared (but apparently had had a lovely time!) and I’m told Skye had too Fran had, clearly, adored it and thrown herself into it and the teacher said she’d done really well. She did look alarmingly at home dancing in a group actually, I do think she would probably quite happily do that for a living if she got a chance.

We got them home and fed them endless extra food and trotted them through the same as the other girls with a reasonable amount of success. The others played like loons in the garden and had a wonderful time.

Think it was really very successful. Wish I could find the piece of paper I did the rest of the planning on though! Eeek.

I finished off my Hama Bead pattern which I am very pleased with indeed and then went off on my bike ride and got to 200 miles (did have a couple of non-bikey weeks due to being so busy and horrible rain). Am gradually beginning to tone up and lose some weight now which makes the biking feel worth while and it is good for my soul. Been listening to Swiss Family Robinson; it’s enjoyable but i do wonder about an island with tigers, hyenas, lions, kangaroos, elephants, jackals and more. There was a quote on family and learning and living together which I loved; I must try and find it. I have a copy of it somewhere from when I was a child though. I read most of it but it seems very different to the one I am listening to.

On the way home I got a call to say Fran passed her grade 2 cello with 126 (Merit) and managed 28/30 in the piece she only swapped to two weeks before the exam. Happy girl

I had not the faintest idea how to keep myself in a manageable condition today; it has been really tough.

I therefore decided to tidy. *faint smile*

The dining room has been melting under crud for a while, so I decided to tackle it. It has too many places for stuff to get piled and to lurk and holds all our crafting stuff, plus a cello, 3 violins, a viola, 2 flutes, a glock, a keyboard and a couple of guitars.

And a lot of mess.

I cleared two bin bags of stuff excavating, a little tearfully, lots of the crafty stuff the girls did while I was in hospital with Freddie. I binned a million bits; I seem to be entirely un-sentimental all of a sudden. I daresay I’ll regret some of it but hey… today it felt cathartic.

We’ve reduced two bookcases down to one.

I’m not sure what happens to a home educator who gets rid of books and puts bookcases in the garage. I guess the HE police may turn up and bust me back down to Sergeant

We even have separate shelves for crafty bits. Go me.

Been back out on my bike after a bit of a break. Nearly up to 200 miles.

Had a family bbq. Tomorrow will be better.

Last Friday we went off to Wicksteed Park for the day. Not been for ages and the girls all really enjoyed themselves, mingling with friends and going on rides with them and with Daddy. I was happy just to mooch and watch them enjoy their half price wristbands; I’m not a fan of rides and I’m still in a slightly odd place about being out with all of us together. I get an odd sensation of feeling I should be carrying a baby on my front and I can’t let myself go yet to do things I wouldn’t be able to do if I had him there. I can’t explain it well; it isn’t a conscious feeling but i think it is slightly like the “Turn Left” bug on Donna’s back in Doctor Who – I can’t see him but I can feel him and he colours my movements at times, mostly at unfamiliar times. It is one of the things that makes out-of-the-ordinary difficult; I’ve got used to not having him at home, in the place where he actually was and should be, but I get some sort of odd ghosting effect when I’m out. It takes some effort to overcome it.

Still, the girls had fun and Max had fun and I had time to chat with friends. I’ve never been good at trivial chit-chat and I’m woefully inadequate at it now, but it as nice to be around people. We pitched our tent in the nick of time and weathered some extreme wind and rain – the wind finished for the day one it was up!! Max and I, having decided camping without cooking implements was perfectly okay, took the girls out for dinner and got home in time for them to play with friends for a good while.

In any old life, you get tragedy, funny stories and happy endings and the next few turned into a mixture of all of them, the only tragedy thankfully being our own already happened one, mixed with happy events that managed to turn into a funny story. (And I’ll preface this by saying all texts and news were welcome and delightful ) I got a text, from an unknown number, announcing the arrival of a little boy. Knowing I didn’t have my BIL’s number in my phone, I assumed it to be the arrival of a nephew and although I had hoped to do better, I lost it rather My lovely friends gathered around me and kept me company through my tears. I think I’m one of a select number of people who have managed to make Nic cry It was a tough night though, I was so sad and lonely for my boy and I suppose kind of fearful for the future.

Sometime in the night I texted my sister a congratulations and brightkited that I had a nephew.

My still very pregnant sister was quite surprised by this the next day

I had forgotten I had given my number to another expectant mum and in a bit of a state, hadn’t really put two and two together despite seeing my sister having posted something somewhere and despite it really being a smaller baby than my overdue sister was likely to have!

Once I (and she!) got over the shock and she’d prodded her tummy and clung on to real things to check she was still alive, it all became extremely funny. Possibly hysterically. My friends rolled their eyes lots and patted me And it did make the actual arrival of said nephew a few days later a good bit easier than it might have been

Anyway, we spent most of the next two days at the Festival of History which was good, though I didn’t get as much from it as I had done before. But we saw some interesting displays and talked to some nice people, bought a Tollen Wheel and some nice wool and socialised. We went back on Sunday to watch the Romans – Max says I’m obsessed with them since reading the Boudica books but although it fascinates me, I mostly get cross – invading, barbarous scum! I’d post pics but my camera flex has gone.

We got back in time for Amelie to do her Grade 1 Ballet exam. Phew. Everything done.

Monday was art day at Zoe’s – already blogged.

Tuesday I hid at work and Max did various things with the girls; it’s been a while since we did formal maths type stuff and he worked through some stuff with them. I’d prefer that to be only me but as they’d not been quick enough at multiplying for his liking, I can’t really complain. Bizarrely he set them exams in exam conditions which they thought completely wonderful and did rather well at. So I felt less bad after that.

Wednesday I can’t really remember. We did some art and some writing and a gym lesson which they all joined in at and did well at. I think maybe i worked again in the afternoon and Max did something with them.

Thursday I was definitely at work – I think – but that might leave me a day short, hmmm… – , enjoying twiddling around the edges of my now nice and tidy hama beads section and preparing for new entries on the BeadMerrily Hama Patterns blog. It is such an effort of will to start that again. I made it all ready a couple of nights before Freddie was born, dared to put “nearly here” quotes on the front page while worrying I shouldn’t tempt fate. Took them down straight after. Gods, I miss him. I miss the promise of him.

Max and the girls did more maths and something else I have utterly forgotten. He’s doing a great job of keeping them busy. And somewhere mulched into Thursday and Friday, when I was definitely at home is the following:-

Amelie braiding with a Tollen Wheel.

Signing everyone up to Mathletics with their rather wonderful home educators deal. This has been a pretty big hit with all of them and I’m relieved they appear to all be able to do the maths for the year they should have just completed at school, except Amelie who is clearly far more clever at maths than a self respecting 8 year old should be!

Mathletics couldn’t beat a times table workbook for Josie though – she has worked tirelessly at that this week and can work out her tables up to her 4’s and switched from 2x to 3x all on her own. I was very impressed.

Some time last week Fran wrote this, a round up of how she has researched her ballet project.

We harvested the first of our radishes.

Maddy graded at TKD and got her Green Tag belt. I think after she has done green, quite soon, she graded at an odd time due to all our stuff, she can move up to the Intermediate group. She’s certainly loved her sparring class and working at it all a bit more studiously.

Josie and I bought some magnetic words and pictures and have been making silly sentence and reading a level 2 Ladybird book together (Tom and Kate, SO dumbed down!)

And that’s it – not so busy but not empty, not so together this week but not as falling apart as it could be I guess. The girls have had big ups and downs this week, Fran most of all but we’re getting there. I say that, I have no idea where we’re trying to get to. I wonder if there ever comes a point where we can all say “aww… remember Freddie?”

I suspect not.

I’ve just realised that for the last two Fridays I haven’t counted how many weeks it is since Freddie was born. For at least the last Tuesday, I haven’t counted how many weeks it is since he died. I guess that is progress of sorts. I’m not going to count. I think 2nds and 13ths will be hard for a while yet but maybe there is some hope.

I hate the processes that come with this. The counting. The hearing. The seeing. The sheer effort of not seeing, sliding my eyes past babies in Tesco, not going through the baby clothes section in order to make myself not indulge. Not listening to the words on the radio. Turning it off quickly. Making it, ruthlessly, that I don’t have to see anything to do with babies. Having to ask my children not to ask obsessively about their birth weights, their births, play babies and birth in front of me. Little hurts to keep me sane enough that I don’t hurt people with something bigger. So I don’t break apart. Seeing my children stop and hold their breath to see if I’m going to break down. Wondering if it is better to break in front of them so they know how I love them all and how devastated I am not to have one of them, or not and leave them wondering if I’d carry on okay if it were one of them who had died.

Being frightened, all the time, of turning into a person I don’t want to be, or becoming someone who hurts others out of sheer, desperate, jealous bitterness.

***

Little sister, I love you. I love that you have your baby boy now. Don’t ever doubt it. Forgive me that I can’t come yet, or look yet, or listen yet. I am so happy for you. I know, I KNOW that he will be the greatest gift you have ever given me, in a little while. I am so grateful he is here and that you have him and can enjoy him. So grateful for your ears and understanding. So sorry I can’t be the sister to you I should be and that I’m not thinking straight enough to get it right.

Love you lots and lots and lots.