Right where I am 2013: two months out from five years

It is Sunday morning, and I head off for my usual Sunday run. Well, usual for the past eight months or so anyway. The kids both scream for me at the window as I leave - neither one of them ever enjoy it when take off, but this is something I need to do now and I know they eventually get over it and enjoy their time hanging with Dad. Winter has well and truly set in, and I'm frozen to the core. I wonder why I'm not rugged up at home in my ugg boots sipping warm tea and eating a huge helping of pancakes or "pannies" as the kids call them, like I once would have done on a Sunday morning like this in winter, my least favourite time of year and especially for the past four years.

The grass is crisp with frost and the fog has settled in around the trees, trunks bare with the dregs of the autumn leaves in damp piles around their bases. The light is magnificent, and the sky has a brilliant almost opaque colour, like nothing I've ever seen. I wonder why every single person in the neighbourhood isn't out admiring this raw, earthly beauty, but for now I just enjoy what is almost my own personal art exhibition, put on by Mother Nature herself. Shards of light pierce through the trees, like beams of hope from heaven. Is heaven a real place? This morning I think it most certainly is.

Right where I am now is the fittest and healthiest I have ever been my entire adult life, and I feel bloody fantastic. I started running last October and this July, I will take part in my first ever half marathon. Once upon a time I thought you should only run if you're being chased, or maybe if you're crazy. Not so much now. There is an awful quote floating around that I've seen shared on social media of late that reads "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" and the thing is, for me it has nothing to do with being "skinny" but being fit, strong and healthy, things that have alluded me for far too long now. I have certainly lost a lot of weight, and perhaps I could now consider myself thin, but "skinny" has not and will not ever be the aim. Having three children in three years has done things to my body that no amount of clean eating and running will change. The number on the scales and on the tags of the clothes I wear don't really mean anything, I just enjoy having a lust for life again, in a way that perhaps I have never had, even before Hope died.

I had no idea how much my weight and and compromised health as a result, was affecting every single aspect of my life, and probably most profoundly, my grief. Because the grief certainly affects every single aspect of my life - whether I'm peeling a potato, scrubbing the toilet, reading a book or driving to the shops - almost five years on it can and still does catch you off guard.

When I was out running today, admiring the winter sun pouring in through the trees, I swear I saw a vision little girl standing at the base of a winter sunbeam, on the path up ahead of me. She was wearing a long flowing dress, and had shoulder length straight brown hair, with a neatly trimmed fringe. It is exactly as I imagine my girl would look about now, slightly different to my other kids and in a weird and ironically uncanny sort of way, the odd one out. She had arms outstretched for me and I gasped, because for the first time since she left me, I was able to picture what she would look like this very moment, and for once I wasn't just thinking about myself, MY loss and my BABY who died, but the almost five year old girl that we are right at this moment all living our lives without.

And this life right now, it is wonderful. There is so much going on, so much change afoot and damn it I wish she was a part of it. But the truth is I've been so busy living this life, taking care of the two small humans who buzz around at my feet and demand more of me than I thought was possible, that I don't get much time to think of her and really miss her. Not like I once did, anyway.

But today, while I was out doing what I've been doing every Sunday since October last year, taking care of me so I can better take care of everyone else, I thought of her, and in that moment I was able to conjure her up amidst a little ray of light from the great afterlife in the sky, it was beautiful. I wasn't sad or solemn and it didn't make me writhe with anger like my grief previously has, rather it was just touching to be reminded that no matter where I am or what I'm doing, she's never really far away, even if it has taken me almost five years to experience a moment like that. Moments like those will probably always be fleeting, and I don't expect to have another like it tomorrow, but her life was fleeting, so I'll just take them as they come.

I hate winter. I hate it for all that it signifies for our family and for all the horrid memories it brings back to the surface, and in many ways I think I always will, but today I could appreciate the beauty that this time of year also has to offer, because for so long I've shut myself off to it.

When Hope's fifth birthday rolls around in a little less than two months, the same time spring will thankfully be on our doorstep, we'll also be in a new home, which is the main reason there has been so much going on here of late. We're moving from the only home she ever knew, not that she ever got to make it to the outside to live here. But she was conceived here, and I spent nine months in this house nurturing her. And when she died, I came here to grieve, declaring these four walls my safe haven from the brutally harsh world out there that I was for a long time not ready to be part of. And now here I am, living in that world again, running on Sundays, moving house when I thought I'd never be able to and taking part in it all again. The exciting part is I know we're moving on to bigger and better things, too. We absolutely adore our new home and can't wait to get in there. It was one of the most zen, warm, homely and welcoming places I have ever set foot in, and now it is ours. We know our old home holds more memories, both good and bad, than we could ever imagine to accurately tally, but that's the thing with memories, we'll be taking them with us, and thankfully we won't need any boxes for them.

You never forget, you never move on, but five years on, there is healing and there certainly is happiness and folks, I think I've found it.

2012
2011