3 years

She would have been three today. Beautiful, fiesty, Aurelia Bernadette Miles.

A lot has happened in those 3 short years mainly because we now have two more mini Miles’- George who is two and Henry who is three months. They have filled our lives with so much joy after so much sadness. Their presence in our lives has been so very healing.

The bad days are few and far between now, in fact bad days tend to be bad afternoons or bad hours as opposed to bad days. Usually it’s a short and sharp jolt of grief that creeps up on you from out of nowhere.

Recently George and I were at a family farm when suddenly I heard someone shout Aurelia. In front of me ran a little girl with blonde curls- it was almost as though the little girl is imagined was in front of me. It was like a punch in the stomach. Time stood still until I shook myself out of it to ensure I was on guard for the little one who is still in my care.

Other times it’s almost as if I seek the grief, or at least her presence in some form or other. The best thing for this is smells- I sometimes catch a whiff of something washed with the same fabric conditioner that the clothes we put her in had been washed in. I drink it up letting it temporarily transport me to moments when she was in my arms.

The most pervasive form of grief though is what Gerard aptly described the other day to me as a shade of greyness to life now. That doesn’t mean we don’t have really happy moments. It’s just that in some ways those happy moments can often remind us of what we’ve lost. For me that can invoke a strange sense of guilt because I love all my children dearly yet there may have been no George and Henry without losing Aurelia. I can’t imagine, or want a life without my two boys, but then of course more than anything I wish we had Aurelia. It’s a strange tension to hold in your life.

The more I reflect on that tension though the more I let go of it, little by little. Our life is what it is and it has so much in it to be grateful for. In some ways it is useless (though natural) to go through all the what ifs. As it is, because of Aurelia I have two boys I adore, because of Aurelia I have relationships with people I’d never have had, because of Aurelia I’ve developed into (hopefully) a better version of myself. It’s ok to be sad about what we have lost, but it’s also ok to enjoy what we now have despite or because of losing Aurelia. It isn’t disloyal to her in doing so, it’s just living life as it is.

In some ways how we spent today is a perfect symbol of this. I’d had no plans to mark the day but my dad asked to come down from to lay some flowers on her grave so we all made the trip down to the village on the sea where she’s buried. We bought golden yellow flowers (Aurelia means golden) and laid them on her grave. But then we spent the rest of the day as a family enjoying life with a picnic, paddling in the sea, drinking coffee, chatting and laughing in the sunshine. We acknowledged the sadness that whilst we look life a family of four, our fifth and dearly treasured member is missing; but we enjoyed (and wholeheartedly too) life as it is.

I don’t actually think there’s a much greater mark of respect we could have showed Aurelia than this today- it was a recognition, and dare I say it, in many ways a celebration of everything she’s brought into our lives.