A celebration!

Just over 4 weeks after the event, I'm finally ready to write about it!

The weeks leading up to Joshua's birthday (at least 3 weeks) were, as usual, horrendous. It's almost like my head and my body and my heart remembers what's coming and I have no control over how I deal with it. I was teary and grumpy and tired and sore and generally not very nice to be around. Thankfully I had my first private session with Suzie the week before Joshua's birthday and she helped me make the decision to do exactly what I wanted to for Joshua's birthday instead of what everyone else wanted or expected me to do.

A few days before Joshua's birthday, I sent out an email to those who I felt were connected to him in some way, inviting them over for dinner on his birthday and was pleasantly surprised when I received quite a few acceptances.

On the morning of his birthday I woke up grouchy and, unfortunately, so did Amy. I knew that she, like me, was coping with feelings of grief, but I didn't have the strength to help her cope that day. We ended up yelling at each other quite a bit in the morning, but by lunchtime we were both in better moods. My plan was to tidy the house in the morning and cook in the afternoon, so I tidied as much as I could before lunch. Amy wanted to make Joshua's cake so, after lunch, she started.

After making lunch for the girls I started clearing up and found myself cleaning and cleaning and cleaning... just like on the day of Joshua's funeral. (I was late to the church on the day of his funeral because I just had to clean the car - something I had't done in over 6 months because of the amount of pain that it causes.) As I cleaned I kept saying to myself "That's enough cleaning now, you have to start cooking for your dinner guests" - I didn't listen to myself!

I half expected Mum and my sister to arrive at any minute to help, so that I didn't have to take the girls to the shops with me but when I called them at 4pm they said that they didn't realise that people were arriving so early. When the first guests walked in at 4pm I hadn't even bought the ingredients I needed, let alone started the cooking. I was a little stressed!

Fortunately a very kind guest offered to go to the shop for me and dinner became a community effort which was really nice. After dinner, we all sang "Happy Birthday" to Joshua and cut the cake that Amy and Jeremy had hurriedly but beautifully iced. Amy, Charlotte and I said a few words of thanks to our guests and then we watched a beautiful YouTube clip called "Precious Child" accompanied by the song with the same name written by Karen Taylor Good. It sums up almost exactly how I feel about Cara and Joshua and I thought it would help our guests understand why we felt the need to celebrate their birthdays.

You can view the clip here:

When I eventually got to sit down and "experience" the evening my heart was filled with joy. Our home was filled with family and friends, but most importantly that beautiful sound of children enjoying life - laughter and giggles and yelling and singing and of course a bit of fighting... my dream had become reality and I went to sleep that night with a big smile on my face, along with the deep longing in my heart to have all my darling children here on earth with me.

After dessert, a friend called me outside to where Amy was and told me what had happened outside. Apparently, Amy had gone out to find a star in the sky because that is our symbol of Joshua and because it was a cloudy night she couldn't see any and so she started calling out to Joshua. After a minute or two she saw a sudden and very measurable glow in one area of the night sky, and this is when they called me. To me it looked like someone was in "that particular room in heaven" and they had turned on a soft lamp. That glow was so comforting and I'm sure there's a valid scientific explanation for it, but for myself and Amy it was Joshua turning a lamp on in his bedroom just to let us know that he is okay.

A magical end to a magical evening. ;-)