Mama's Haven

This would be the first year I attend BritMums in London and to be honest, I am both excited and apprehensive!

I am excited I will meet so many lovely bloggers, whom I have been following and befriending and admiring for ages!

I am apprehensive because I am not very good with names, especially now, after losing Georgie.

So the lovely people from Simoney have decided to make things a little bit easier for me and have offered a number of mummy bloggers, including myself, the opportunity to create a personalised badge with their name and the name of their blog.

If you are a blogger attending BritMums this year, please look for the dragonfly badge! Feel free to introduce yourself, give me a squeeze and make friends with me!

Looking forward to seeing everybody there!

Today, we landed in Normandy, France.

It is our first time in this part of the world. We are here to visit family, to enjoy some time together and create memories.

On the way, we decided to stop on the Omaha Beach to pay our respects to the thousands who died here on June the 6th, 1944.

We did it with reverence.

Having witnessed the death of our precious son last July, I do not take pain, especially a mother’s pain, lightly.

On Omaha beach, the suffering of over 3000 mothers was incurred by machine guns,  vain ambitions and grandomania.

It was almost overwhelming to set foot on the same beach where so many dreams and hopes and lives were shattered in a matter of mere hours.

But what I didn’t know is that the beach is now guarded by Les Braves, a war monument erected in the memory of the thousands of American soldiers fallen there.

Very appropriately, the memorial, as seen in the picture above, marks in its three composing elements Wings of Hope, Rise of Freedom and Wings of Fraternity.

It made me think of our loss, being on the Omaha Beach.

I truly hope that the devastation that death has brought upon us last year will not be the end of the story…

71 years from now, I wish our lives would have been a promise of Hope, a testament of Freedom and a story written in the Fraterity of suffering.

I hope we will be wise and we will not allow the heart-wrenching pain we live with every day to corrode and destroy the hope in the future.

I hope we will never lose sight of the revelation that sorrow has brought upon us and never let a day go to waste. Death has paradoxically freed us of many social and spiritual bonds. I am determined to live in this new found and so very painfully gained new freedom. I am also committed to extend the same grace to anyone around me and be accepting and supportive of anyone in need.

And I truly wish that this story will bring upon the formation of a new Fraternity. The Fraternity of the suffering, the Fraternity of the pained, the Fraternity of the needy.

Today, on the Omaha beach, where so much suffering and loss was witnessed 71 years ago, we laughed and we enjoyed a moment of freedom.

May our lives and their memories would have left, 71 years from now, a legacy of joy, of freedom and of fraternity.

May our son’s loss not be in vain, just like all those young lives, sacrificed on the shores of Normandy, were not in vain to Europe’s modern history.

Dear Dalriada Doctor,

I am sorry I inconvenienced you today by phoning twice for a prescription I should have had the consideration to organise before the Easter holidays began.

Mea culpa.

But still, a bit of compassion and respect would have worked wonders, you know?

I get it.

You sounded bored and ready to go home.

Maybe the extra money you are getting for working on a public holiday does not make you happy.

I understand.

Maybe you had been working from 9 in the morning and had had enough of snotty toddlers and drunk youths. Or maybe you were on call last night and you went to see a dying child in the hospice close by your practice. Possible.

But you don’t know my story.

You didn’t scroll long enough through my medical file to see that in July last year, my life changed into a nightmare forever.

I know, it’s been nine months and I should be “over it” by now. After all, my son was only a baby when he died, right, and I can always go and have another one. Like a puppy from a pet shop.

The truth is, and trust me, I did contemplate for a second sharing it with you over the phone, my life is as screwed up now as it was nine months ago.

I still wake up in the middle of the night. Almost every night.

I still forget loads of things. Like birthdays. Conversations. Coffee and lunch dates.

I am still grieving, you see.

Medically, there is nothing wrong with me.

I function, thanks to Fluoxedine and my daughter, who needs me every moment of every day.

But grief makes me forgetful and easily distracted and probably, as you said, disorganised.

I put my family first and end up exhausted and disheveled at the end of the day.

The little energy I have gets consumed easily with thoughts and tears and rage.

On a daily basis.

Yes, I didn’t realise I was running out of pills.

Yes, I should have planned better.

But I think, and correct me if I am wrong, your role there is not to admonish or deter patients but to serve.

I know, I know, I saw the new policy. Don’t use “emergency” services unless necessary.

I was not an emergency.

Not yet, anyway.

But tell me, should I have waited and taken myself off antidepressants and maybe end up jumping off a cliff?

I wouldn’t have been an emergency then either, because I would have been dead…

As I said, I am sorry I have inconvenienced you today.

I will make sure next time I will order my pills in time.

And I truly hope that you will never be at the receiving end of a Dalriada line…

This is my son, whose loss I grieve every day. I know you didn’t know. Would you have treated me better if you did, I wonder???

Cinemagic is something new to me, I must admit. I had to research its history and future events before writing this post.

A group of enthusiasts formed a charity meant to inspire children and young people through film and film making. The charity hosts now events in major cities like New York, Dublin and Belfast.

To benefit the children and siblings that have been in contact with the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, Cinemagic had this morning in the Odeon cinema ( Victoria Centre, Belfast) a special screening of the new Cinderella movie. And we went, to Emma’s total delight and to ours too, we must admit!

For two hours, we were given the opportunity to dream alongside our children about princesses and princes, love which conquers meanness and happily ever afters.

We were reminded of good life principles of “stay strong and be kind” with which we would have agreed wholeheartedly before we were faced with our new reality.

It is good to dream. It is good to forget, even for a couple of hours, that life is unfortunately far from being a fairytale.

It is good to become a child again and be transported in a world where the good and the bad a clearly delineated.

It is good to remember that normality is possible and doing things as a family, incomplete as it may be, can still be enjoyable.

Thank you, Cinemagic!

And thank you, Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, for keeping us close and allowing our living children to enjoy a delightful event alongside their parents!