A letter to my darling Belsie, 3 years after you left us – by Simone

by Recover the gift

My baby girl

It’s 3 years ago today that you left us on this earth. As your dad said to me this morning, sometimes it feels like only half an hour ago, other times an entire lifetime ago. But the one thing that doesn’t change is that we miss you so very desperately every single day and that you are never ever not with us, in our hearts. There is not a day that goes by where I don’t wonder how different life would be if you were still alive. I mourn not only for you but for the loss of that version of life. While so much of the days around that time are blurred with very little memory, those hours around your death are so clear to me. I still play out that time in my head over and over again but the trauma around it has started to fade somewhat from those early days.

Your dad, brother and I have come away to the bush for the weekend. I find the day easier to bear when we are away from home, just the 3 of us, with nobody we know around us, no expectations. I also somehow feel closer to you in the bush, in nature, where lots of distractions are removed. We were up at sunrise to go on our game drive and we had an amazing cheetah sighting. We then also had breakfast out in the bush and now I am sitting in the sun writing this to you, with your brother playing so happily. He has made 2 little friends here, slightly older than him, and I can hear him telling them that you and Thomas died. He obviously doesn’t know that today is the day you died, we don’t tell him that, but he talks about you so so often, you are never forgotten by him.

Baby girl, this year has been quite something. A year ago, when I wrote your letter, I completely expected that a year later we would have a new baby, that somehow that part of our journey would have worked out for us. That a small bandage would have been put on our broken heart, not in any way to forget you, but just to have a new life to pour some of our energy into.

But we now know that that isn’t in the stars for us, that our family of 3 on earth is the complete version of our family and we are working on making peace with that. And in some ways I do feel a sense of relief. That I don’t have to keep on fighting so furiously for something that is now clearly out of my reach, that I don’t have to continue to go through the monthly emotional and physical turmoil of failed pregnancy/baby dreams.

And while this weekend is about grieving you, it’s also about making new memories with Murray, giving him all of us, and letting him know that he is enough. I soak up every moment with him, so proud of the amazing little boy he is, of the resilience and honesty he displays.

Baby girl, I know that I can not go back and change the past, no matter how much I try or want to. But what I can do is mould the future. I can live every day making you proud of me, living the life you were so cruelly robbed of and ensuring your legacy lives on.

I miss you with every fiber of my being and love you now and forever with all my heart.

Your mom xxx