We bought the flowers today. Heart shaped. We started using a heart shape on the 10th year. We used to have numbers, the year-old she would have been, but double digits just seemed weird.
Whenever I see people buying flowers I always assume they're for a lost loved one. I don't know if I've told you that already. After Tia was born, after Tia died, after we lost her, people sent us flowers. Flowers to morn. Flowers brought life into our home when, thirteen years ago, it was so desperately missing.
At the start it was an abundance, as the months went on, understandably there were less. On her first birthday year, more flowers arrived. Reminding me of life, love and loveliness after loss.
At some point, Julie and I signed up to getting flowers delivered weekly. In a way, to me, it was Tia's doing. Something that reminded me of a love that wasn't there.
It confuses me when I see people buying flowers with happy smiles on their face, I forget flowers aren't always used for those we lost.
We'll take the heart shaped flowers (and more) to Angel's Corner, where Tia is buried, tomorrow. Ahead of her birthday day. So that we can share it with our close family.
With each year that passes, there's, so far, always been some new thing that was lost. A new first thing that didn't happen. Last year Tia would have started secondary school - a big first. This year, she would have turned 13 - an age that was important to me growing up. Lots of memories that define me started around the age 13 and I just don't get to see that with Tia.
Life marches onwards. It doesn't wait for us to catch up. But Julie and I are still lucky, or fortunate or… something, we have our two at home. Ellis and Seren. They help that life march onwards, and I think sometimes they help me catch up.
It doesn't hurt as much as it did, probably because I've grown to bear the weight over time, but there's still the occasion when the waves crash into me and I feel I lose my balance a little. It tends to take the breath out of me, and a feeling like a weight directly in the middle of my chest.
I still miss her, but I do always think of the poem "A ship at my side spreads her white sails". And writing this helps to relieve that pressure in my chest.
So thank you for listening to me, it's my way of making Tia real and not just some fragment of our memories.
