Neil and Rachael

For many people April the first has comic overtones. But for us it will always be a day for sad reflection. Today is the anniversary of Joseph Salmon’s death.

I want to thank Neil and Rachael for writing this guest post. Words can’t express how proud I am of my friends.

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Joseph

Three is the Magic Number; Three Steps to Heaven; Three Coins in a Fountain. As numbers go, three is a pretty popular one. Three seems to be a number which is just, well, right. It rounds things off nicely. We have had three children. On his last birthday our son was three. Three years ago our son died.

It’s hard to believe sometimes that it’s so long since we lost him. Come October, he will have been dead longer than he was alive and we’ll have yet another hurdle to get over. But that will be then and this is now. The fact is, on the 1st April we will be reliving what happened on the day we lost our sunshine, our first born child, our big boy. Joseph.

Joseph had been very happy when he went to bed on the Thursday night. He was tucked up in bed, he was kissed and cuddled, and he went to sleep. Had the Friday morning been like any other day, he would have woken up and carried on with his life just like he had done for the past three and a half years. But that was not to be. The hours, days, weeks and months, and now years that followed Joseph’s death have brought many changes for our family, but the one thing that remains constant is how much we miss him and how we ache to have him back

To all intents and purposes we look like a “normal” family. Two parents, two children. Nobody would know to look at us that we have lost a child. We still sleep, eat, talk, even laugh and have fun. But what we have running round inside our heads all the time, like a non-stop soundtrack is “Our child has died”. To have created a life, got through those first few uncertain weeks of pregnancy and produced a healthy, happy child who seemed to have all the time in the world to grow and develop, and then to have him taken away, was a cruel, harsh blow. It pulled the rug from under us and everything we knew, or thought we knew, about life was thrown into complete turmoil.

In the few days following Joseph’s death, we spent a lot of time just sitting, saying nothing. It was as though the enormity of not only what we had just gone through, but would have to go through for the rest of our lives, was so great that the only thing we could manage to do was breathe in and out. Even that was an effort at times.

When we look back on those early days, it’s amazing to think that we have got to where we are now. Our second child, our daughter Lydia, will be starting school this September and she is a confident and happy girl. She knows that her brother used to live with us and we have told her that he lives in heaven now, and she does talk about him. But, thankfully, she does not feel the pain that we do and does not have the ache and the sadness to deal with every moment of every day. We are grateful to have her though and we know that, in the first raw weeks after Joseph’s death, if it had not been for her we would not have got up in the morning. There would have been no point. Little children have a way though of making you carry on. We have certainly found that to be true having since had a third child, Eve, who propelled us back into the world of having two children, and who continues, with her sister, to make us marvel at just how good life can still be.

So life does go on, even though it’s not on the path that we would have chosen. Without our boy we would have been very different people. He was the first person we loved unconditionally. He made us better people. He was funny, bright, affectionate, friendly, amazing. He was our lad. We miss the way he talked, the sound of his footsteps, the way he smiled.

We miss him every day.

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This post was originally written two years ago, but Neil and Rachael’s pain will never go away.

As you all know, In July of this year myself and sixty others will be walking the Hadrian’s Wall footpath in aid of the charity Neil and Rachael have founded in memorial to their son. That’s 84 miles in 6 days.

The walkers are a disparate bunch. Some are bloggers, some are not. Some are in their twenties, some in their late fifties. Some come from the UK, others from the USA and Holland. But all have been touched by the courage and strength of Neil and Rachael and want to support them in honouring their son.

The Joseph Salmon Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss. Grieving families have enough to deal with without worries about where they will find the money to say goodbye to their child or pay the next electricity bill. Nothing we can do can make their situation better, but we can do something to stop it getting worse.

We are aiming to raise £20,000. This is a huge amount to a small charity such as the Trust and will make a massive difference to the support they are able to provide to people going through the worst pain imaginable. But we can’t do it without your support.

If you haven’t yet donated to Hadrian’s Walk then please consider doing so now. Any amount, no matter how small will make a big difference. And the Trust works on a purely voluntary basis with all administration expenses being paid by corporate sponsorship; so your money will go directly to the people who need it most.

You can donate here:

http://www.justgiving.com/hadrianswalkers

Or alternatively, if you wish to set up a regular monthly payment of a couple of pounds to the Tust you can do that here.

You can find out more about the walk at hadrianswalk.org. As always if you want to reprint all or part of this post to promote the charity you are more than welcome to.

Thank you.

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Related posts:

1. Guest Post Tuesday: Neil and Rachael
2. In Remembrance
3. A possible addition to the franchise
4. Down Under Support in the Buff
5. Blogging: 4 years, 1071 posts, and the chance to make a difference.