12 September 2008 - Lake Windermere

7.30 PM, FRIDAY 12 SEPTEMBER 2008

As I sit here on the shore of Lake Windermere, watching the gentlest of sunsets, the sky to my left is orange behind the clouds and to my right, simply clouds, I am reminded of what a difference there is between this evening and that which we had 23 years ago.

About this time I had taken Pauline into the hospital for what was to prove the evening before our son was born, it’s a long story and often told but after much screaming and yelling, around 5.50 in the morning he came noisily into this world,

Those of you reading this who have had children will understand why I fell in love with him at that moment and will know the feelings of pleasure after the long wait and the hoping and the worrying are over, the sense of relief that all is well and a healthy child is born, then, after the initial excitement dies down, there are feelings of potential and a life that has been created and is to be nurtured and protected and most of all, lived.

The years of nurturing and preparing ones child and developing them, in the best way you can, to be fully rounded people with a place and a contribution to make in society seem all the harder to fathom when ones child is taken so early, there have been so many hours spent searching for the reasons for this brutal cessation of the love affair we had with our son.

Of course, logic suggests that there is no point on such speculation as it has happened and there is damn all anyone can do to change that. But logic doesn’t always prevail these days and emotion seems to get the better of me so often. How much worse this time is for Pauline as a mother is something only another mother can know, there is a difference between mums and dad’s, there has to be, no matter how much a dad can love his child, a mother had that person grow inside her and begin to bond from the moment of conception.

Its darker here now and the contrast between the scene left and the scene right is more evident,

I feel similarly that the contrast to my life backwards and my life yet to come is huge, Adams presence in my life was so large that the gap he leaves seems impossible to fill, and yet, I know that it is indeed impossible to fill and it would not be right to fill it. Life for me, for us, has changed; and the notion of it returning to normal is misguided; for this is now normal and it is simply a case of readjustment…. Simply? Well, in truth, not simple at all, but unavoidable.

I feel more balanced when I am near water, he liked water and it is possible to feel him closer to me in peaceful moments such as this, although what the others walking past make of this guy sitting on a bench, crying and typing away on his lappie in the drizzle, I neither know nor care, the drizzle I can handle, but the damn midges are beginning to bug me. The prospect of an hour in the cold water of the lake tomorrow seems fine about now; this may well change by the time the swim comes of course!