To try and keep in a less sad space, here are some more recollections from the do and after;

Just a few quotes from a li’l 7 year old to an 18 year old;
“Do you really have hounds in the back of your car?  Will you release them if I don’t do my maths?”
“Amy?”  “Yeah?”   “You’re beautiful”.
Treasured memories.

I’ll never be able to look at an Eddie Stobart or a bus without thinking of your splendid LB (and the travel industry!)  The world was a better place for him I’m sure.

LB was always so content in himself, I think more than anyone else I’ve ever met. I always admired that.

LB – you look like Romain Duris, very strange!  Beautiful!   Remember when we were in France, you kept asking ‘Why’? Until Sam told you to turn your whybox off!  Peace out dude.

T and Z always talk about when we went to London Zoo and on the way home we got off the London bus which started to drive off, and Sara thought LB was still on it.  She started banging on the side of the bus.  LB, who was standing behind her, said “Wot you doing Mum?”  They will miss their funny cousin.

LB, we will always remember you for that massive beaming smile, and your love of many different foods, especially the Branston pickle.  I always relish the memory of playing  football with you and your brothers. You kept telling us “I’m gonna get drunk tonight”. You made us laugh over and over.  I’m gonna have a good drink tonight LB and remember all those happy times.

LB – big smile at the mention of “Death’s Door.”
“It’s an outrage!!”
Vote for Pedro.

I’ll always remember our 2^nd holiday to France in 2006 when LB collected all the empty pizza boxes, put them on the back of a skateboard, sat on it and drove them down the chateau’s corridor, delivering pizzas.

This was at the same time he got a splinter in his foot, and despite Andy having removed it, LB still maintained he could not walk properly, so kept asking people to carry him up the stairs. This proved tricky as his bedroom was on the third floor, and he would inevitably have left a bus downstairs so had to go all the way back down minutes later.

This third floor bedroom was the one which Connor threw his model “Vince” from to see if he could fly.   It turned out that the 3^rd floor descent was a fatal fall and poor Vince came to pieces. LB buried him by a tree in the garden.

Thomley Hall where a great friendship started despite James P. knocking both your boys down a hole.  I will also never forget LB at the CPA saying “load of bollocks” under his breath.

LB: “Where do you live?”
Me: “Wheatley”
LB: “Near Plaistow’s Coach Company?”

Malvern Hills Residential
“Jackstar”
“What’s up LBstar?”
“Got the same shoes”
“Wow, shoe buddies”
Then that smile all day whenever LB saw my shoes. Just love him.

My favourite LB story, think it was my second day at JWS, it happened during one of my lessons. (Can’t remember what it was about but I can remember it wasn’t anything to do with colours!) I was still talking when LB said, “Is your mum black?” “No” I said. “Is your dad black?” “No”, desperately trying to get back to my lesson. LB said, “So why aren’t you black?” I stopped and said “LB, I’m really confused!!” He paused a while and said: “Me too. You’re from Africa so why aren’t you black?”

Rosie and I have worked through a few bags/boxes of LB’s things in the last week or so. We came across a notebook in our first box which was unused other than tiny colourful squares on the margins of every page. ‘Now that’s weird’, we thought. ‘Wonder why he did that?’

Then the other day we came across the two big ring binder notebooks he seemed to really love. One was filled with pictures of Tom Chaplin. The other with pictures of the ConnorCo removal lorry. The penny dropped. Totally genius.

We’ve been pitched into such a strange, howling ‘non space’ in the last six weeks. Yep, it’s six weeks tomorrow morning. My head remains in a ‘shrieky/turmoil ridden/too, too awful to fully engage with anything’ state of agitation. My heart? Well, I can’t go there. Not sure I ever will.

We had two days this week in London with Tom and Owen. As we’ve done for the last couple of years. This was ok-ish. Thanks boys. We had fun. We chatted, we wandered about. Rich and I walked round the Serpentine while they explored Oxford Street. The open water/countryside type space that allows me to breath. Later, I swallowed my irrational fear when the two of them went on the Star Flyer ride on the South Bank.

I managed to keep the anguish largely confined to moments in between family time. When it was just Rich and I. Between remembering LB moments. The camping trip a couple of years ago when LB announced “I know nothing about fishing, I just know about women”. Re-living memories of the ‘do’. The do that’s becoming a cornerstone of our reflections about LB. That it was as good as it could have been, an enormous comfort.

And then the many memories of LB in London. The space he loved. He consistently wished from an early age that he ‘was a Londoner’. On the ‘Just you and me mum’ trips that was one of the few things he’d say. On the South Bank this weekend, we reflected on how much LB would have loved the busker standing in the Thames. Singing about Pentax pens. The flame proof moth. What a guy.

I spoke to little sis Sam today. She’s got a rocking bereavement counsellor friend who is happy to give me a call, love her. When you get a waiting list for this sort of gig, it ain’t really that helpful. The Oxfordshire based children’s service, Seesaw, are on it.

Rich and I sat out in the garden earlier, talking about what’s happened. As we do all the time. He thinks I’m doing ok really. In the circumstances. Grief is total crapshite. How could it be anything else? He just wanted me to know that. And I am. It’s unspeakably, indescribably awful. A stifling cage of enduring, unstoppable shite. The whole ‘investigation/inquest and beyond’ stuff is unthinkable. I’ve read and re-read the unit and social care notes. I have some idea about what lays ahead.

What upsets me most in all this is where is LB? Where is our hilarious dude?  How can the processes that will (or are, or may be) creaking into being ever capture who he was? Who he should have been?  I want to know how our beautiful, funny boy will remain visible? As a person. And not just be another ‘case’ to be briefly picked over in some sort of faux ‘important’ investigation/review only to be ultimately ignored. Parked in the graveyard of learning disability and indifference.

I don’t suppose for one moment I’m alone in howling about this. Thankfully.

But I’m doing ok overall on the grief front. I agree with Rich. It’s just a festering pile of fuckingcrapshitebollockfilledtosswank.

Sadly.

The afternoon before LB died I was interviewed (and filmed) about my experiences of being his mum. This interview was to give our research assistant, Sophie, practice in in-depth, qualitative interviewing. The actual interview wasn’t ever to see the light of day, other than Sophie watching it through to reflect on her developing interview skills. Anyone who knows me would appreciate that this wasn’t a task I embraced, but Sophie did a good job and handled what was, in places, a difficult story sensitively.

This film took on a different meaning the next day. It was a record of me chatting and laughing about LB in the present tense. In a way I never would again. Rosie and I watched it together and separately during those sleepless early nights. We decided to make a short film for the after do party. A mix of photos, extracts from the interview, home movies and music. We sat at the kitchen table for hours, sorting through photos, deciding on video/home movie extracts and the soundtrack. Our attention to detail was faultless as we made sure the photo of LB delighting in the confetti thrown at a friend’s wedding coincided with the magical section of Pure Imagination. The lyrics about seeing paradise had a photo of LB sitting on Hergest Ridge with a stunning backdrop.  The film started with a short clip of LB as a babe, sitting in his high chair, laughing his socks off. The chatty bits from the interview had Einaudi’s piano playing quietly in the background. We laughed, we bawled and we concentrated.

I finished the interview with Sophie by saying “He’s made life interesting, he’s made life colourful. He’s great.” And we ended the short film with a blast from Divine Comedy’s ‘National Express’. As it should be.

I spoke to someone from Cruse on the phone the other day, exploring options for counselling. I ain’t optimistic that it will help, but it’s on my list of potential strategies to ease the pain. Eh? What else is on the list? Erm, not an awful lot really. Time and wine basically. The former relentless and the latter not a good model for life in the long term.

Anyway, the Cruse woman was horrified by what had happened. Audibly horrified. Everyone has been. But her response, given that she works for a grief gig, got me thinking about what could be worse. Doing that ordering/othering thing we all do at some point or another. Measuring our own experiences against those who seem to have worse experiences to try and gain some sense of something. I decided that having a child taken by someone, treated violently and eventually killed was worse. Definitely worse.

This morning I thought about what had happened to LB. The extended restraints, the drugging, and the length of time he spent in the unit. In the ‘care’ of the state, rather than at the hands of a random individual.

It doesn’t get much worse.

I changed from being a cremation to a burial type of gal in the last five weeks. Well, to be honest I hadn’t given death much thought before (sort of ‘lucky’ enough to have largely kept a ‘hands over the ears, eyes squeezed shut’ approach to it up to now). That changed in a blink. On a sunny morning.  A day with innocuous work tasks ahead, lunch bought and, for the first time ever, put in the work fridge. Thoughts of whether or not LB might want to go to the school Summer Ball the following evening. And then the call from the unit and carnage.

One of the awful things (there are so many ‘awful’ things, awful really becomes meaningless) about unexpected death, is that you’re faced with unspeakable decisions to make in a very short space of time. A space in which you don’t want to make such decisions and you really ain’t really in a position to make such decisions. Major, major decisions. Decisions that parents should never have to make. With the accompanying screaming backdrop of disbelief, desolation and despair.  But the clock is kind of ticking and processes need to be set in motion.

The crem was out. Way too brutal. And final.

Our local cemetery was closed to new business. It overlooked the hospital where LB died, so wasn’t really an option. Rosie’s friend’s uncle had recently, sadly, been buried in the woodland part of Wolvercote cemetery. She said it was lovely space.  Our amazing funeral director said there was space available. And the decision was oddly straightforward in the end.

I went for a walkabout there with my mum and older sis the Sunday before the do. I liked the shade of the trees in the baking heat. I liked the peaceful feeling of the space. It felt right. And it still feels right. And, among so much that feels wrong, that screams wrong, this feeling is important. As it turned out, LB is in a lovely spot. On the edge of the woodland area, very close to the outbuilding housing the diggers. Under the trees but with sunlight, and a lovely view of the rest of the cemetery. Perfect.

But so, so fucking wrong.

Just a quick update to say that I won’t be blogging about the investigations into LB’s death (as much as I’d like to). The process has to be followed without me butting in publicly every five minutes, ranting and raging. Wearing out swears and expletives. The time for that will be later. I’ll just say that I find it slightly ironic in a good way, that the dude who had so much faith in his legal team while he was alive, now has a superb team* fighting his corner.

He would love that.

*Thanks to the support of the charity Inquest, a brilliant organisation.

Rosie and I sorted out two bags of stuff yesterday afternoon. We found these two notebooks that made us chuckle. The ‘LB rocks’ books.  On each page, he’d drawn a little figure holding something (a megaphone?) and had written what rocks in different colour neon marker pens.

This was largely him, with ‘LB rocks!’ pretty much on every other page.

London, suburban London, Mighty Boosh, Oxford, Son of Rambow and Europe all got a few mentions. Leeds was chucked in once. On the last page in both books, he’d written ‘The End’.

Love him.

I don’t know if I can find the words here, right now. Well they don’t exist, as far as I know. It’s late. I’m ‘grief-tired’ (I’m putting out a lazy shorthand term until someone creates the words to adequately capture this experience). ‘Grief-tired’ differs from ‘typical tired’, if there is such a thing, because it involves a lack of sleep combined with crushing sadness, anxiety, questions, agitation, being in a state of full alert (not sure what the full alert is for but anything less seems a betrayal of LB), worry and despair.

So much sadness.

This sadness isn’t confined to right now but extends indefinitely across time and space. Not only in the everyday but also the anniversaries, ‘special occasions’, holidays, the anticipation of events or places that LB (son, grandson, cousin, nephew, potential brother in law/uncle, family friend, pupil, friend, dude in the Wheatley Asda, acquaintance) should be present but won’t be. The pain associated with this absence, how we fill this space, is too enormous to think about.

But there’s right now to think about too. The immediate loss to layers of family and friends and others who loved LB, liked him, admired him, delighted in his humour, or hung out with him. And those who loved the (odd) socks off him. Like we did.

I’m raging against those who led us to this space. I want to say have a long look at yourselves. A long, hard look at yourselves. Have a critical think about what you did and what you didn’t do. What you could or should have done. Think about the processes you followed, the processes you ignored. The processes you should have challenged. The common sense you ditched, the indifference, thoughtlessness, carelessness, lack of humanity and empathy you demonstrated to him, and to us. Because there are a hell of a lot of other dudes like LB out there. Dudes who deserve better.