And here we have it, Thomas' final hours with us. We had made a final visit to Helen House the previous day to try to help make him more comfortable. He had been suffering tremendously, which was agonising to watch. I honestly would have done anything to change places with him or to have released him from his pain. It was heartbreaking when all we could do was to hold him close whilst we watched him whimper between his aggressive seizures, unable to keep any food or medication in his stomach. Every time I think of this time in his life, I fall to pieces. No one would want to watch their own child suffer like this, particularly when you know that the final outcome would be his death. As a parent, one of your roles is to protect your children and yet we were unable to perform this most basic of functions.
I held him in my arms for the entire car journey back home from Helen House - unable to let him go in case he took his last breath. He had come into this world having grown inside my tummy; there was no way I could let him leave it lying on his own in a car seat unaware that we were with him. I didn't want him to feel lonely or abandoned. He was very pale and was fighting to stay alive to reach home and to say his final goodbyes to Lucy and Oliver.
We had once again reached rock bottom. We spent hours watching him, snuggled on the sofa, trying to imprint on our memories all those precious things a photo cannot capture, absorbing every final movement and noise he made. It now only takes one glance at the photo above to remind me of all these things and to take me back to those moments with him. This photo in particular, stimulates the memory of the feel of his soft fluffy hair on my face and the smell of his head: the warmth of us snuggled together and his weight in my arms. That is something I never want to forget.
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