Is she your only child?

Sisters

This question has come up a few times now and most recently last week.

We've made a big effort to rally round and keep doing things and try as best we can to keep busy. I think we both prefer it that way. It doesn't mean its easy but Hannah taught us the value of living and we intend to channel her courage moving forward. Pangs of guilt hit you for doing things without her though and it's impossible to be enjoying something without imagining her there and how she would react. I know your first thought right now might be, 'well that's silly and you shouldn't punish yourselves'. It's not really punishing yourself though because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You cant just switch it off. Those feelings are there and quite honestly I don't want them to go away because it keeps her real. That might sound like a strange thing to say but honestly sometimes this all feels like a weird dream quite frankly and there is a small dark part of you questioning whether any of it ever actually happened. Thank goodness we live in a time of thousands upon thousands of videos and photographs to look back on. Trust me, you can never take too many pictures.

I have started travelling again at work, fortunately so far most of my travel has been reasonably close so I've been able to take Kate and Nora with me, and we've turned them into fun mini road trips. I use the term mini, the last one was Nashville and that's a 10 - 11 hour drive. Its crazy how a 10 hour drive here is 'not that far', on a good day you could lap England in that time. It's been nice to have them with me and i'm sure that works the other way. I'm well aware its tough on Kate being home when I am travelling away. At least I have the advantage of being busy and going to different places.

The inevitable outcome of keeping busy and going to places is you meet people. Nora is only two and she has this way of attracting people to her. I'm biased but she's pretty cute and you couldn't exactly call her shy. She spent the best part of a year communicating with strangers, Nurses and Doctors who would entertain her while Hannah was being cared for so she's also not exactly lacking in confidence. It's not a problem though, we love meeting people and talking to people. I always find it interesting here because no one is really born and raised in one place, at least in Florida, and they always have stories and i'm a sucker for a good story.

Last weekend we were in Chattanooga and sat in the hotel lobby / bar. We were having a quick drink before going out for dinner - nothing fancy just pizza as it was close by and we were exhausted from walking around all day. By the way pencil Chattanooga and Tennessee in your places to go to, you can thank me when you get there. Anyway, there was a lovely lady on the next table and she began interacting with Nora. She was really nice, she talked, or rather listened, to Nora trying to recreate the day to her and was with us for a good while. She began telling us about her Grand Children who were similar ages to Nora and Hannah. I knew the question was coming, I could tell long before it was asked, and after speaking to Kate at dinner she had the same thought.

"Is she your only child"? she asked.

Now the question isn't a problem but it's more we just don't know how to respond. I was thinking for a good five minutes before it was asked how I would answer and it didn't go as planned, it rarely does. In the end, and clearly having the same battle inside her head, Kate answered and just said yes. We've also answered the same question to other people and said no. In saying yes you have this tearing guilty feeling rip through you. It felt awful to be honest. In saying no you leave yourself open to other questions and the risk of having to talk about it all. Did this woman want to hear, on a lovely Sunday evening, while shes enjoying our company, a sad story of how we lost our beautiful seven year old Daughter to cancer? How would it affect the rest of her evening? Did we even want to talk about it? Are we even ready to talk about it? We were enjoying the conversation so would telling her change it? Would it set us off into one of those deep dark moments you struggle to shake yourself from? I know these have question marks but i'm not really writing seeking answers. Quite honestly I don't know if there are any black and white answers.

When Hannah was diagnosed it was rough initially talking to 'normal' people. We obviously had to tell people and I would watch over and over their face change, obviously through caring about her, but I could also see them mentally trying to figure out what it felt like to be going through what we were going through. I don't think its being offensive, and it's certainly not intended to be, to say you have absolutely no clue what its like unless you have to deal with it and honestly I don't ever want any of you to have to. It exhausted me then and took a while to come to grips with it. Maybe it was just me being in shock and adjusting and I was the problem. Regardless, t's just a natural response though. We cant expect people to understand so how can we expect them to know how to respond to such awful news. This is why it was so comforting and therapeutic to build relationships with families going through the same thing. It was refreshing to talk about it without having to explain and the conversations actually became very matter of fact as we shared our own little stories. During Protons I would sit for hours talking to other Dads and Mums and it was absolutely the best therapy for all of us. Honestly, it set us up mentally for everything else we would have to go through.

You see, I want to talk about her. I guess this is why I'm writing. In my eyes she was perfect in every single way. I don't want conversations to be suddenly awkward just because she's not here. If you share a story about something your child did at five and six years old it will invariably trigger a story I have that mine did. I have tons of them, as we all do. I want to tell you all about her and I want to share all the little details about her, about how funny she was, how creative she was and how much I loved watching her little mind branch off to crazy places. Even the personal things, as a great man once said, "the little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. People call these things imperfections, but they're not, aw, that's the good stuff."

The lady told us about Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and how fabulous it was. She told us all about it and how much her Grandaughter loved it, she was the same age as Hannah. She told us about the make up process and the dresses they get to choose. "You absolutely have to take her when she's older", she said. But, we know all about it, we've been and I wanted to tell her how much Hannah loved it and how amazing she looked.

My Princess

So why didn't I and why is it so difficult to deal with that question? I guess it's experience and we are still raw. Each day seems as though it often has a new gateway we have to walk through. Perhaps in time we will be able to judge a situation and we'll be able to tell the truth without having to worry about how it will affect us or the person we are talking to. It's no one's fault, just the situation we are unfortunately in. For now maybe we'll just pretend she's at her Grand Parents and make some extra stuff up we wish she was actually doing.