10 years on...

July 1st 2007, the first day of the smoking ban, was a beautiful, warm summer’s day. It was Sunday and, as we left the hospital, the streets were quiet and deserted. My brother had driven down from Bishops Stortford and was waiting outside Great Ormond Street to bring us back to my parents’ house in Oxford where Oliver was staying.

As I climbed into the back of the car I had an overwhelming sense of relief. The nightmare was finally over. Emma would not suffer anymore. The hope that had been driving us close to insanity for the last 7 weeks was gone and we could get off the rollercoaster.

What I wasn’t prepared for is what is left when hope is gone, a black and bottomless pit of hopelessness.

We had been in the process of moving from London to Oxfordshire while Emma was ill and this was still our plan but we hadn’t even sold our London home at this stage. Kate contacted the vicar from Stanford in the Vale and we arranged to meet. He explained that the village churchyard is generally reserved for members of the village but then he gently told us that he would make an exception for our daughter. And so began our love for this wonderful village.

Stanford put its arms around us then and when we walked into the church for the first time a couple of weeks later to orientate ourselves the night before Emma’s funeral I spotted a prayer tree. Despite the fact that we were strangers to this visllage, the first prayer I looked at was for our family.

After the funeral the three of us went home to London and, apart from preparing to move house, life was as it had been. Emma hadn’t had enough time to make a big physical impact on our lives so, apart from a small pile of pink clothes and a stack of congratulations / condolence cards, nothing much had changed.

Of course while our outsides hadn’t changed our insides were hideous. I spent hour’s online trying to find other women, mothers, who had lost a child but had survived. I wanted to find someone to tell me that 5 or 10 years on life could be worth living again, that we could be happy, that there was still joy out there, that there was hope.

I soon realised that these people are not readily available. Many don’t want to talk about it, especially to total strangers and this is not a topic that is easy to “Google”!

Everyone told me “you will be alright”, “time will heal”, “everything will be ok in the end” but that’s not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know if I would ever giggle again, if I would be able chat about something trivial and not feel overwhelming guilt or if I would ever be able to sing along to a tune in the car or catch myself smiling over nothing much. I couldn’t find answers to any of these questions and I felt very alone.

Neil said something at Emma’s funeral that I didn’t really understand at the time. He said that what had happened to Emma and to us was so awful and so painful that we must make sure that everything that comes after is good and happy and positive.

Not for one moment did I think that I had a right to happiness. For a long time my answer to “how are you?” whether it came from a friend or the Tesco checkout lady, was “my daughter died”.

But there was Oliver. My beautiful, healthy, happy and energetic 2 year old. He made it possible for me to get out of bed and he made it possible for me to carry on. He was worth living for.

Then on the 7th July 2008 James arrived and suddenly our arms were full again. I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time, hope.
When James was about 7 weeks old, the same age as Emma had been when she died, Granny Carol came to stay with us. As we were walking to the park Oliver asked if we could “visit Emma”.

We walked down to her grave and he asked me something I was totally unprepared for. He said “where is she Mummy, where actually is she?” I tripped and fumbled my way through a crass explanation of wrapping her up and laying her gently in her lovely white box and placing her in the ground. Even as I said it I knew it was all wrong.

Oliver looked at James, sleeping in my arms, then back at the grave in horror and started shouting “get her out Mummy, get her out, we have to take her home and get her warm, get her out!”

I was mortified and when Neil came home we talked it through. We talked about Emma’s Rainbow and how all rainbows remind us of her. We told Oliver then James and later Frank that, for us, Emma is in every rainbow now and whenever we see one that’s her way of saying “hello”.

On the 18th May 2010 Frank joined us. Suddenly we were a family of 5, something that we would never have planned before Emma was born. She had changed the whole structure of our family and it was total chaos. In amongst the madness of 3 boys under 5 I realised that, not only do we now have many reasons to live and hearts that are full of hope, we also have joy and lots of it.

Now I am the woman that I had been searching for in that dark pit of despair just after the funeral. It is 10 years since Emma died and not only have we survived, but I do giggle and sing along to songs in the car and every so often I smile over some little thing when no one can see me. I am happy.

Knowing that this is a message that families like us want and need to hear is something that has spurred me on to host the charity events that we run. It is wonderful to raise money for such worthwhile causes and to see good come out of tragedy, but there are some other lovely benefits that I had not expected. When I share Emma’s story with someone a small part of her is carried with them and that has a great power for healing. Seeing families and children playing and enjoying themselves together at our events fills us with hope, and reminds us how precious every moment is. We realise again how lucky we are to have our lovely boys and to be part of such a loving community. I have experienced fantastic generosity, kindness and empathy from family, friends and total strangers; if this happens in my daughter’s name then what better way to celebrate her short life.

I had always hoped that one day I would find the time to set up a charity in Emma’s name and that all the money we raised would pour into that. This year, when I started planning the Fun Day, I contacted GOSH to let them know what I was doing. I received a very moving phone call from Louisa on their fundraising team explaining that they host mini charities within their own to hold the money that families like ours raise in their children’s memories. Did I want all of Emma’s fundraising money to go into a new pot, “The Emma Kate Braddy Brighter Future Fund”? This was exactly what I had always wanted and when she explained that they could organise for us to have our own logo I told her about our rainbow and how we use that as a sort of logo. Louisa went very quiet and then she said, “the Brighter Future Fund logo IS a rainbow”.

Emma is in my thoughts every moment of every day, in the same way that my 3 boys are, and the pain of her loss is as bad today as it was on 1st July 2007. However, the deep imprint of pain that an experience like this leaves has given the space for a deeper joy than I had known before. Joy and pain sit alongside each other every moment and that’s OK.

Finally I understood what Neil had been saying at the funeral. Emma’s brief life and tragic death had an enormous impact on our lives, it changed us and, in many ways, it has made us the people we are today.
But we have a choice about who we are and what we do. We do not want Emma to have left a broken, beaten family. We choose to be happy and that is her legacy.