"They're beautiful!" I smiled at the delivery driver as she handed me the bouquet of flowers. I watched her walk back to her car before shutting the front door and turned to find Ieuan standing behind me. "Look at these!," I said to him, "Shall we go and find a nice vase to put them…
Dear Evalyn, I remember visiting your special place last Christmas. I remember the heaviness that weighed down on my chest and I have come to realise over this year that this is the feeling of missing you. I remember families who had ventured to the same woods walking by where we stood, probably wondering to…
Dear Evalyn, Do you remember when we said our last Goodbye? It was around 12:30pm on the 9th November last year. I was sitting on the hospital bed and you were there in front of me lying wrapped up in your little moses basket. You looked so perfect, so beautiful and in that moment I…
I glanced at my reflection one last time in the mirror, put down the hairspray and sighed. What was the point? I'd been working on the fly-away hairs for fifteen minutes and they were still no closer to obeying my orders to just stay put. Ahhhh postpartum hair regrowth! One more treat for mothers to…
I'm not sure why we were discussing funerals. I was a teenager standing on the stairs in our family home and my nan was fixing me with a stubborn glare that the women in our family have inherited and the men in our family know all too well. "I don't want anyone turning up at…
"A trigger in psychology is a stimulus such as a smell, sound or sight that triggers feelings of trauma." I folded the clothes neatly into a pile and placed them into the bag ready to go to the charity shop. Some of the jumpers were nearly new and had only been worn a handful of…
I had a plan. When I sat down last Summer with my maternity leave form in front of me, I was very clear in my mind as to what my plan would be: 1. Have my baby. 2. Take a year's maternity leave. 3. After a year, return to work so I could financially support…
The women who have come before me in our family tree have always had a strong attidude when it comes to death. But for someone who has inherited my emotional side from my dad, this has at times been a hard act to follow. On the day my Grandad passed away, I sat on my…
The week after Evalyn passed away, I remember waking up in the night to the sound of Ieuan crying out in his sleep. Nick and I leapt from our bed and ran to his room by which time, Ieuan had already woken himself up. "What were you dreaming about, darling?" I asked him as I…
The room that was already small was made to feel even smaller by the fact there were already two other families waiting in it. The receptionist had called it a 'waiting room' but I was pretty sure that at one time throughout history it had actually been a cupboard. I clung to the paperwork that…
After Evalyn 