This weekend, we will begin a tradition.

Come this Saturday, August the twenty-second, we will hold Ava’s Tea Party.

Even though our plans for this year are tiny…really just some simple tea cakes and a pretty frock for Ivy, I am excited to be doing this.  I want it to be the start of something really special..an annual tradition for our family.  A time to remember and a place to be thankful.

But I want this not just for us… My hope is that all of you reading this also take a moment on August 22 to share a cupcake, or a pink milk, or maybe just a cuddle with your own loved ones..For Ava.  If you’re able to extend to a little tea party, that would make my heart sing. To imagine people taking time out of their day to do nothing more than love and cherish and laugh with friends and family..Just to really stop and be thankful for the gift that is a normal, happy day.. This, I would love.

Sheye xx

ps. If you do decide to participate, I would dearly love to see a photo :)

Ava’s Tea Party Invitation available from Belle & Boo.

So. It’s August.

The days are ticking over just a little too quickly while I try to navigate around the wishes and the shoulds.

We have planned something simple and beautiful for Ava’s birthday, I will share in another post.  For now I wanted to show you another thing of beauty, created by the lovely and talented Kym Drury from Madilu Designs,  in honor of Ava’s birth month.  Kym has put together the sweetest 5×5 album template for the tiny  price of $10 and even more wonderful, she is so generously donating all proceeds to Paradise Kids in Ava’s memory.

I’m so touched by this gesture and struggle to put into words how much it means that Ava is remembered in different, beautiful ways by beautiful strangers..especially at this time of year.  For anyone who loves pretty templates or if you’d just like to support an amazing group of people who has made so much difference to our family, I would really appreciate it if you could stop by at Kyms and see her lovely creation.

Thankyou is not enough Kym, but thankyou.

Love Sheye xx

There was a day I was single, and one I was married.

Days I birthed children, and a day I bid one farewell.

Days I wept and regretted and pleaded and days I rejoiced.

A day the idea of a holiday, with one less child child, one less ticket, one less suitcase, would have sent me plummeting into missing and yearning and bitter hatred for the life I’ve been dealt.  But time is truly a gift and there did come a day where we began to imagine just that.  And then a day we did it.  We packed our bags, got on a plane and took our smaller, once broken family on holiday.

The planning of our trip to the US was much the same as we do everything in our household..without too much planning.  We like the spontaneous.  Saying that, no doubt we each had a hazy vision beforehand of what we believed the trip would hold for us.  The boys vision included Legoland as a main feature, Ivy was fixated on the tea cup ride at Disney, Crayton wanted to just live like a local.   Me, of course I imagined the afternoon light and the shopping but more than any of that, I imagined heart mending.  I wanted to believe that it would be okay to go away, to laugh, to explore and just be together, without the what if’s and the should be’s and the yearning for different.  In the weeks before we left, I imagined it over and over..the hazy scene of the five of us playing at the beach with nothing more than simple happiness.  How I hoped.

And you know, looking back,  we got just that.  The vacation of a lifetime spent doing not very much at all.  My best memories of the last two months involve the simplest of things.. beach days, trips to the store, just driving around and discovering together..absorbing a time where I can say I was genuinely happy with my husband and three children.

It feels like such a huge gift we’ve been given, to not acknowledge it would seem wrong but while I want to share the joy of this time, it’s still not easy to write that.  I’m torn between wanting to always declare my endless missing of Ava.  I fear implying that the grief is no longer there.. the need remains to make sure her life and memory and place in our family still matter, every single day.   It’s a strange mix of gratitude and serenity and fear and it makes me marvel at how life ebbs and flows.   How things do change, no matter how certain you are they won’t.

Fifteen years ago, I could not have imagined finding and marrying my soulmate.

Ten years ago, I could not have imagined four children.

Five years ago, I could not have imagined my daughter was about to celebrate one of only three birthdays.

Two  years ago, I could not have imagined ever laughing again.  Or dreaming.  Or going on holiday.

Yet I did.  My certainty wasn’t very certain at all.

I’ve always said holidays are only good in plans and memories, the daily reality never quite lives up.  I was wrong.. the reality of our simple, happy days spent together these past two months are literally a hazy, hopeful dream come true.

Here’s to heart mending.  And my beautiful Ava.

S x

Initially, in those early months of 2007, Ava’s Daddy & I talked about the mixed feelings that went with Ivy not knowing Ava.    She was just twelve months old when Ava left.   They had not gotten the chance to learn about one another, to play dolls, to fight, to share secrets.  It broke our heart to know those things could never be but at the same time,  we were relieved that she could grow up without the missing that we, and her brothers, would have to endure.

At that time, I held some vague notion that one day, when Ivy was possibly nine, or twelve, she would come to me and say “So, Mum.  This Ava person?  Tell me about her.”  And I would sit down and tell her about a sister she had..for a short while.  Ava.   I’d  show her the special things.   Perhaps open those creaky  armoire doors and pull out some faded dresses.   And how, against all I believed possible, we survived losing her.  Maybe she’d sit quietly and absorb and feel a pang of missing she may not have had before.   I don’t really know but the hazy reel played something like that.

And then, a few short months after Ava left,  I began finding out that Ivy had an awareness of her sister well beyond what I realized.  At just 15 months of age, sitting quietly on my lap in the lounge one night, she suddenly sat straight up and looked over my shoulder.  She started to point and asked me to get up, in toddler babble.  I was not very keen and she was not giving up.  So, we went, her pointing the whole way until we reached the cup cupboard.  From it swung a Xmas ornament with Ava’s photo attached and she demanded that I remove it and give it to her.  I was baffled, so I did.  She promptly kissed it and handed it back.  That was it.  A brief moment in time but for me it shifted how I perceived their relationship.  The reel rewound,  just a little.  And it scared me.

Since that night, there have been so many moments in time.. Together they’ve created a picture of a little girl who very much knows, and misses,  her big sister.   Who pleads to wear her dresses, who asks to visit her in Heaven, who tucks treasures away so that she can “give them to Ava when she comes home”.   I was not ready for this awareness.   It’s not that we constantly mention Ava, we don’t.  We’ve had to find a balance for our children where we include their sister but we allow them to live a life that does not include grief every day.  We would never want that for them.

It still scares me.  I don’t want Ivy to miss Ava.  I don’t want a day where she cries, I mean really cries, for the yearning of her sister.  I don’t want to have to explain where she went, and why.   I don’t even know why.   I feel so guilty that she will grow up with even a little bit of the wishing and wondering that we carry.  I see her playing alone and it makes my heart hurt.    To look at her, to see how very, very much she resembles Ava, to imagine two of them – so similar – side by side.  My heart hurts all over again.  To think of my own life, growing up with a constant playmate, a confidant, almost a part of my self, called sister..

There is a place in my grief that belongs to Ivy alone, and some days it’s just so much bigger than the rest.