Rhianna’s Due Date

Rhianna’s due date isn’t generally a date that floors me.

The first year it was hell, it was all so raw, and it was only three months after she died. That was the worst time for her actual due date.

Rhianna was due on the 5th July, and as it so happened her due date was the day that we had to go back to the hospital to find out what had happened to her.

It seemed almost like fate at the time, the day she should have been born was the day that we found out why she had died.

So it is a date that is in our head always.

But isn’t a date that either of us get really upset about.

But yesterday I was looking through the boys dates for the end of term, as any mother knows the last term within a school year is a manic term, and with two boys at school it is even busier.

So I was standing at the calendar filling out all the dates for school fairs, school trips holiday dates and sports days when I saw that the boys sports day was on the 5th July this year.

It stopped me in my tracks.

I will be honest.

I got a huge lump in my throat and I had to stop.

Now I know children aren’t generally born on their due dates, but you know when you have lost a child those dates become important, they may not be ones that upset you but they become the dates that things should have happened.

Rhianna’s due date is the date that she should have been born.

If she had survived, if her life had panned out as it should have done, if she was with us now, she would have been celebrating her seventh birthday on the 5th July and this year on Sports Day she would be having her birthday while all of them were competing in their school Sports Day.

We would have been watching three children, we would have been cheering on three children.

But we aren’t.

It’s not the life we have.

I am not upset, it didn’t make me cry, but it made me stop in my tracks.

It made me think of the alternative life we should have had.

It made me think of what we don’t have.

It just stopped me, it is hard to explain, I am not sure how to write the words apart from it stopped me. It made me think.

Its an odd experience.

I am not sad all the time about not having Rhianna, I obviously miss her every single waking moment, however some days are fab days, but you constantly forever until the day you die live your life and have a parallel alternative life happening in your head.

If she was here, there would be three kids, three of everything. There would be girlie things as well as boy things in the house. There would be an extra bedtime, more cuddles, more tears, more fighting, more homework, more laughter, more chatting.

Just more than there is now.

And it doesn’t always make me sad, it really doesn’t but it is always in my head. This life we should have had, rather than the life we do have.

Sometimes, the two cross over, sometimes the life you should have had smacks right into the life you do have and it just stops you in your tracks. They collide and for a moment you stop and you think and really think about that moment that should have been.

You process it, you daydream about it, and you carry on in the life you are living!