Happiest Birthday for my Macey.  In twenty nine minutes, he’s officially seven.  

I have to tell you, Mason is an amazing child.  As amazing as all my other amazing children, really :)  But he does have a special something of his own – ask anyone who knows him.  He speaks like a Shakespearean actor, and is equally as dramatic as one, falling to the floor wailing 421 times a day.  (If whining were a sport, he’d compete for Australia.)  

He is  THE most affectionate boy, demanding “HUG” every time we wander past and says he loves me “infinity times infitinty”.   He’s also very clever, lives on Weetbix and insists on wearing his shoes on opposite feet with shoelaces undone.

Last night, I found him fast asleep in front of the tv.  I lugged him up endless stairs, huffing and heaving and staggering the whole way.  As I broke my back gently laying him on his bed, the corners of his mouth turned up in a little grin and his eyes pop wide open.   Gobsmacked that I’d been had, I told him he was 100% brat, and he just disolved into giggles.  As I left the room he says “I’m really very sorry Mummy, I just love to be carried”.    

He’s such a sod and honestly, I love him to bits.  Happy Birthday Meester Macey.   

A confession: I have very seldomly searched the web for my name or Ava’s. I am too afraid of what I could find..a confronting news story, the wrong comment on a forum, anything really..I’m just scared of the unknown. So it’s only if people give me direct links that I get to see the beautiful words others have written.

I’ve been away for a few days.  I came home to a couple of hundred emails, so many of them beautiful comments and little anecdotes that have lifted my spirits.  One though, a comment on my blog with nothing more than a link, has taken my breath away and made my heart sing…When I saw “Super Princess” in the URL my heart began to beat a little faster while I waited for it to open…

A while ago, I woke up to the sun tickling my face and when I opened my eyes, I saw a tiny white butterfly flutter in through the window. It inspected my room, landed on my pillow, seemingly scolding me just a little for daring to still be asleep on such a dazzlingly sunny day. I smiled and it danced out of the window as quickly as it come in.

It reminded me of Ava. Superprincess Ava. Whose story has touched me in so ways over the past year and whose beautiful mother is hanging in there so bravely.

That butterfly made me smile for the first time in a long while, as does Ava, even though I never knew her.

I made this picture months ago, but it never left my computer. After my little butterfly encounter, I gave the little angel white butterfly wings, but never uploaded the picture. I have become very wary of sharing things that I make, afraid of rejection and of criticism. But then I thought that’s wrong. Every moment matters, we have so little time, and it is so much more important to reach out to others than to swallow things for some silly reason.

This beautiful illustration and these words are by GrueneWolken.

I feel so lucky.  I don’t know how that’s possible when I also feel so unlucky, but I do.  I can’t quite take in the impact Ava has had on so many people.  I can’t imagine how it has come about that she is loved and thought about by so many who never knew her.  How can that be?

For a long time, it was a bittersweet thing…The knowing that it wasn’t just me seeing her beauty.  It wasn’t just me missing her.  That she really was that special and she WAS meant to stay here and that she is simply too missed by too many people.  I didn’t want to know about fate and destiny and a time to go.  That didn’t make any sense when so many people felt so deeply.   Many times I’ve wanted to stand up on a table in a crowded place and shout “There has  been  a terrible mistake”. I wanted to be able to go to someone.  To put it in writing and start a petition and complain to a higher being.

This illustration was  such a lovely gift today.  I realised I was able to look at it and really, truly smile.  My heart didn’t hurt.  I didn’t wonder and question.  I love that strangers have come to know Ava.  I love that she has, literally, made the World a more beautiful place.  Even if it were just one other Mother out there hugging one other child a little tighter today, then the World is a better place, isn’t it?  But it’s so many more than one.

I’ve been told of so many beautiful little moments…where little girls are allowed to wear bikinis in Winter and ponchos in Summer, where lipstick is happily applied at dawn by a sleepy eyed parent, where hallways have become beaches for the day and where mothers have crawled into their children’s bed in the middle of the night to wrap them tight and thank God for their being..just because of Ava.  In February,  I wrote that I hoped for this very thing.

Someone once said you hold the grief of your child in one hand and your joy in the other..that they never really meet.  It totally makes sense to me…nothing diminishes the sadness of missing Ava but I am so incredibly thankful that I am given little and big bits of joy every day from so many people who see Ava’s beauty and light.    I struggle to fully explain just what it means.  I feel very lucky.  Thankyou.

With love.

S xx