It’s LB’s 20th birthday on Monday. Howl. Howl. Howl. Howl. I love it that the kids have all been thinking and planning around it. Howl.  I’m unable to do much more than appreciate their thinking and planning. That they are thinking and planning. I don’t say much (sorry kids) and scuffle off into a different space at home. Or work.

Thinking of LB’s birthday when I’m out, as I do at the mo, is a Sooty tears situ. I’m pitched straight back to those early baking July days, and earlier. I walk through town or sit on the bus with tears running down my face.

Funnily enough, for all the rules of social interaction I’ve been fascinated with since becoming a sociology student years ago, I’ve learned you can actually have a good old public weep quite privately. Maybe it’s because of the digital focus. We can all be online now and blank out (deliberately or obliviously) the ‘messiness’ of what might be happening next to/around us.

The birth day space is one of such intense pain that I can barely breathe, function or do anything with. How can you have a child and not celebrate their birthday? How does/will this work over coming years. When LB stays 18 and we all grow older. Without him. Howl. What do you do with such an intense longing/missing for a person who is such an integral part of you?

At the moment my mind calendar is pretty much reduced to two dates; death day and birth day. All other ‘celebratory’ dates (birthdays, Christmas, Easter, etc) are irrelevant. I know I have to move beyond this focus (even though I don’t want to). I know our (pretty legendary) kids have and deserve their own space to do and be and shine and be loved for who they are. Nothing should take away from this. But it’s hard. It’s so bloody hard not to be caught up in and devoured by the intense pain of missing and aching for the cub who was picked off, carelessly and callously, by a publicly funded body. A body that exists to ‘care’.

How the fuck in fucking hellsters is LB not alive?