Some days it is okay. Other days it is mostly okay, with a few added tears and wobbly moments. And some days it is just not okay at all.
Yesterday we received a letter from the Child Death Overview Panel, letting us know that our son’s death (condolences by the way) would be anonymously discussed and any files from Police, Education and Safeguarding Agencies would be pulled together and reviewed to see if any lessons could be learned to safe guard “children at risk”.
It was a generic letter, not a personal one. They didn’t think that far ahead, or consider our feelings. Freddie never had any of those people involved in his life. he wasn’t “at risk” not even, so far as we knew, in the moments before he was born. But it summed up, in one fell swoop, everything that is horribly true.
Freddie is a death. A statistic. A tick box. Something that happened that might mean a target was missed. My child, wrapped up in one fell swoop into the realms of accidents, neglect, cruelty and murder.
And I have no control. He was never properly mine, never properly ours. Everyone else had control of him and not us. I can’t even stop him being discussed and dismissed in a panel I’m not part of. I’ve lost control of even that, the tiny, weeny bit of privacy that might be his: how he died. I can’t be sure that his death hasn’t wiped away any privacy the rest of us might choose to have.
Some days I can think of him and be sad but go on. But other days I miss him so badly that it is like my heart has been ripped out of my chest while it’s still beating. My arms ache to hold him. They just ache.
Oh Merry, I’m so sorry to read this. It’s unfair that Freddie is being shuffled in among those other children. This is awful, unfair and I’m sorry it is happening to you.
Sweetheart, so so sorry, fo the letter and for the aching arms xxx
Hugs for the pain and the aching arms xxx
Bureaucratic idiots! There is no heart in the way these organizations work.
I suppose you cant answer back to their gross insensitivity and arrogance, are not expected to even.
Thinking of you, Merry, and fuming that a letter like that could even come through your door.
Such a letter is an appaulling way to treat you: have you the energy to complain or would it only add more heartache?
What a shocking, horrible letter. I am so sorry. I don’t understand the governmental rational involved. I am guessing that it is part of a program which seemed a ‘good idea’ when implemented but which isn’t handled particularly well or even decently.
I’m sorry.
Honey, Im sorry, its just shit. x
Oh Merry – I am just so sorry. So sorry that you have to go through this and sorry for those aching arms ( I recognise the feeling so well).