You have to be very careful about things like Christmas because Christmas, well my brother’s birthday was November 5th so that’s a very sad time and in fact we flew back with him on 5th November. And Christmas we find very difficult because not only did he have his funeral on 23rd December but also you know there’s always one person missing and New Year, you know Auld Lang, Auld Lang Syne, it’s all about you know, being with family and friends, but also the people who aren’t there, so those are very difficult times, and people aren’t, I mean in general the population is celebrating Christmas and why shouldn’t they, and they’re having a very jolly time but it’s always a very poignant time. I couldn’t go along to office Christmas dos and things like that because I just, and also you have to be very careful to stay away from alcohol because you’re in such a state that just a few glasses will tip you into kind of blubbering oblivion, it does all sorts of other things that you need to, you just have to be incredibly, you’re very, very fragile, and a lot of people don’t realise. You know they’ll say, Oh you know it happened six months ago And you’re still you know in the most incredible state, but people, but you have to hide it, and people expect, because they’re, a lot of work colleagues will say for example, Oh well you know, my Mum and my Grandmother died or something like that, and it was a bit sad, but you know you get over it sort of thing. And I think a lot of people didn’t, when, and I would be one of them that were completely unprepared for how long it takes you to get back to normal.

Do you ever get back to
Well no you don’t. You won’t really, but so that you can you can concentrate enough to function as a working individual. That takes quite a long time. But no, you never get back to normal, you never get back to where you were on, I’ll never get back to where I was on the 11th October 2002.

So, as you can imagine Christmas that year waiting for information and the first Christmas without my daughter, was sheer hell, and I have nothing at all to do with Christmas now. I completely ignore it, I don’t want to know about it, and friends have been very supportive and they send me Christmas cards saying, Happy Shortest Da, so that there’s no mention of Christmas in the Christmas card.

Oh.

Which is nice of them. So then the inquest was at the end of January that year. And it was appalling, it was appalling.

And anniversaries, you say Christmas is terrible, you don’t want to
I never have anything to do with Christmas, no I don’t want it.

What about, I know other anniversaries like her birthday must be difficult as well?

Yes it is, but that’s when I go to see the tree at the college, and that’s doing really well, it’s a silver birch tree and it’s really big now and I occasionally see rabbits there as well which is important because we did have pet rabbits and so, it feels like her sort of place, and so now when it’s her birthday I go to the tree, yes. And I always do something to connect with her on the anniversary of her death. Sometimes I go to the tree, or sometimes there might be something else that I can go to, for example, one of the RoadPeace supporters is a professional musician who occasionally organises concerts for us, fundraising concerts for us, and this year, entirely coincidentally, nothing to do with me, he didn’t even know the date of my daughters death, but this year the concert was on the anniversary of her death, so that was what I did this year, go to the concert.

Mm, how nice.

And think about her, yes.

Do you want to say anything about anniversaries?

Anniversaries are very, very hard; they’re one of those things that you can’t escape. Every year you’ve got several anniversaries, you’ve got Christmas, you’ve got birthday, you’ve got, well I have Mother’s Day, and then you’ve got the anniversary of when it happened, they loom over you. As they get closer you can you can feel this, it’s very oppressive feeling, its, it’s that, it takes you to a dark place to be honest. It is, it sets you back. But I think what, what helps is to try and do something positive, like I’ll take lots of flowers to the cemetery and I’ll make it really nice. I always light candles and I speak to my Mum and I’ll say happy birthday or happy Mother’s Day, and I’ll write something to her. I think you need to again have some sort of connection with the one that you’ve lost, and if you want to cry a lot then that’s fine, let it out. It, you know, just because a year’s passed, two years, three years, four years, whatever it may be. You don’t have to be all cleared up and
ot cry anymore. I think you could cry for the rest of your life if you need to you know? Not every day, but on and off there’s going to be triggers, and they are going to make you go back and visit a dark place. But again you will come out, you will come out of it, and somehow you’ll see the light, I don’t know, you do somehow come through it.

How do you view the future now?

One day at a time.

Yes.

One day at a time. I think you feel broken in pieces, but you somehow do, you do carry on. You just have to I guess.

Are certain times more difficult like the anniversary of your son’s birthday or Christmas?

No, it’s no more difficult now, no not now. Initially the first year, yes I wept at Christmas when he wasn’t there but after that I would think about him but I would think about him differently, like I said I came to terms with my son’s death very quickly, knowing that first of all he’s dead and that’s where we’re all going and I think that was my main thing, that we are all going to die there’s nowhere when we came out of the womb that said you would live until you were ten. At the bottom of my son’s grave there’s a child of eight and every time I go and see him, things are put into perspective and nobody murdered him, he got caught under his grandmother’s brand new wheel chair, playing as a child of eight, went under there for some reason, got caught and suffocated and died. Can you think of the trauma that grandmother went through? You know and so he is lying at the bottom of my son. Death is a fellow, is a fellow partner really in our lives, there’s life and there’s death and so once you come to terms that we’re all going to die, there’s nothing says we have to live up till we are 90 and there’re lots of babies in the cemetery as well, and they didn’t ask to be dead, you know what I’m saying, but they’re dead and that’s something I really believe we all need to come to terms with, it’s a part of life.

It’ll soon be the anniversary of your fiancée’s death, are anniversaries particular difficult times?

Yes. I find the build up to the anniversary which is the 29th of April, it tends to start building round about now, and it gets more intense as it gets nearer and nearer. Many years ago, it used to be so difficult it was heart breaking. Whereas I think at the moment it’s more uplifting for me to be able to celebrate it and her life, rather than go in a commiserating sort of way, and morbid sort of way. Now I go, I wouldn’t say I go hoppity skippity down the road, but I go in, in a much more positive frame of mind to lay my flowers, have my few words and then leave.

Where as many years ago, I found it almost impossible to be there.

That’s the cemetery?

Yes. Whereas now I go quite easily, and lay my flowers and say whatever I have to say and come away.

And I do that at the end of April and if I’m in London and am able to go then I’ll go when, when I can. But I always go on the 29th of April and Christmas Eve.