I am driving in the car doing my ordinary daily routine and suddenly a darling 9 year old boy asks me out of the blue “what was she like?” 

I didn’t have to ask who he was asking about. I knew. He wondered. His little mind was thinking and pondering looking out the window as the fall leaves fell that chilly afternoon.

“She was magical” i said. ” She was magical”

Tell me about her. Was she like you? What was your favorite thing you two did together? How long was she sick for? Why was she sick? Do you miss her?

at that very moment came understanding from a child and gasping for air with tears building up I decided to take a detour. We took the long way home and I told him everything. Driving around random streets, no music on- I let my heart speak.

and he listened to every word with concerned loving eyes.

This young boy has only known me without her. To him, she has always lived in heaven. She was never here-never existed- and he wondered all about it.

He doesn’t know any different- and i know all the difference. It is the dividing line which separates me from new people I meet in my life. SHE is now missing- and that missing link becomes a huge struggle. I struggle to know how to include her in my everyday life now. She always nestles comfortably in my fragile heart and is brought up often in conversations and memories… but time has a sneaky way of masking HER and at the same time grief has such incredible sensitivity to the most normal of things in my days.

Just the other night, I sat around a dinner table beaming with a huge smile with amazing people who have become like family to me and it dawned on me at that very ordinary moment that mummy never knew them. She never got the chance to know the people that came into my life after she had passed. The people that keep her daughter moving forward. 

and THEY never got to know the emmy who had HER.

New people that have brought so much happiness to her daughter. 

and I am happy. Oh, very much so. A different kind of happy. But happy is still happy. and that I am.

To me, she gave them all to me. I know for certain.

Every single day is not like it ever was before March 11, 2009. and it never will be.

It is something so very different- almost like a game of tug of war between sorrow and gratitude. It’s the day to day finding of balance. Learning to let go when I can and feel it when it comes. It’s about everything that I knew with mummy and everything I know without her and trying to move forward with never ever forgetting.

It all seems disjointed.

Yes. so very much so.

Her passing put a new filter on life. I have no choice but to look through it and live each and every day with a grateful, loving heart.

and all her love.

Her love amazes me.

xo