The hardest part is the accepting that they/he/she is gone, for three years I could not accept that.

I heard them playing outside, laughing in the hallway, giggling and chatting in the bedroom, yet everytime I went to where the sound was, there was noone there, and the emptiness, the hole grew bigger until I feared it would engulf not just me but the children that I could see and hear, the ones that I was carrying on for.

I worried about how it was affecting them, the two youngest ones would soon forget, they were only babies, 2 and 3, the older one had gone through a lot in the hospital and she had come home changed forever, nothing was the same, and never would be, yet I clung to this belief that it was all a dream and that I would wake up and everything would be fine, we would all be together and life would be as it was but better.

Of course I never did wake up from that dream, and life was never the same nor better, when realisation finally hit home it was like losing them all over again, finally coming to terms with the fact that they were gone opened one door and forever closed another. I let them go, the hardest thing I have ever done, they are still with me, but I no longer go searching for the faces behind the voices, when I hear the giggles and the laughter I smile and allow myself to think of them as they were, playing skipping or chasing each other. The smiles on their faces, and I know that they will always be here, in my heart in my memories, forever young.