Tia would have turned 16 this year. Another marker that wouldn't come to be. After Tia was lost and born to stillbirth on 31 August 2010, we quickly had a slew of firsts. The first Christmas without her. First mother's day. First birthday. First day at nursery, first day of school. Not turning 10. 16 is another big age. Then so is 18 and all the others.

As a family, we always try to mark her day with something we do together. Something special. For her 10th year, Julie ran ten 10K runs. We were all incredibly proud.

This year, I suggested we walk. The thought was inspired by chatting to Jake, and originally I suggested we could walk 16 miles. We'd decided this much earlier in the year, and we started to do some smaller trails - something like 1-2 hour walks. I was pretty apparent, particularly with how my MS affects my feet, that 16km should be the target.

We carefully worked to find and customise a route (we used AllTrails but also tried Outdoor Active) so that we could find 16km (about 10 miles) with a midway stop for food.

We settled on a walk in the surrounding Arundel area where a good part of the walk was along the river Arun.

A screenshot of All Trails showing the path we planned on taking
We extended our walk a bit by adding a tiny side quest on the day

Really this post is for me to mark and remember the day. Here are some of the highlights I remembered:

  • We associate butterflies (and Gerber flowers) with Tia, and each time a butterfly joined us in our walk, to me, it was like a memory of Tia was with us.

  • We waved at the trains that went past and it made us all cheer when someone would wave back.

  • There were a LOT of cow pats!

  • About 2/3rds of the way, with our boy (nearly 15) following at the back, he calls out "I'VE GOT 5G!" (we had actually cached all the maps offline to make sure we didn't get lost, so heaven knows what he wanted 5G for).

  • Coco (our 3 year old dog, part chihuahua part yorkipoo - ie. small) joined us, also around 2/3rds of the way, she was carried in a backpack (on the front) - we figured she'd done her dues.

  • We ended up walking for 4½ hours (the entire start to end was 6 hours). We clocked 25K steps and raised over £500 for SANDS.

  • I had a little cry when we finished and hugged my (sweaty) family close.

Seven photos arranged in three rows. Top: our family of four in sunglasses on a leafy path, one holding a small terrier like dog; a wooden boardwalk crossing railway tracks with two people walking away into open farmland. Middle: a harvested field under a cloudy sky, a single tree beside a chalk path, and a dirt track running between woodland and a stubble field. Bottom: a group selfie of five beside a river, and a teenager carrying the same dog in a sling with reeds behind.
It was such a wonderful and special day 💞