Memory.
Today is about sharing a significant memory, negative or positive.
I'm not ready to share my most significant memories, those are the ones that most haunt me at 3am. I've never even spoken to Woody about them. I don't think I will ever share them, despite a small part of me wanting to make it very clear to all the absolute horror of that morning in hospital.
I could share the memories I have of conversations and simple moments where I just knew Florence was safer in my womb than she would be out of it.
Instead I'm going to share memories from our family holiday in Hereford just a few weeks before Florence was born.
We had such a wonderful time, the sun shone, and the children played. I sat on a deck chair and knitted the little bonnet in the photo. The pattern was one I'd used to knit the same bonnet for Eden before she was born. Florence was buried wearing this bonnet....that's another memory....
We had several days out in Hilly Malvern, and on one of them, the children pulled my huge lumbering self up a particular hill, and we stopped in on a beautiful children's boutique, where I bought this little dress. I didn't know I was having a girl, but as with all my children, I had very strong instincts that I was. (I have always been right!)
The dress is now in her memory box, never worn, but I can still imagine just how it would've felt over her chubby baby belly, warm skin under soft cotton lawn. That is so vivid to me, and was in the shop when it was hanging on a hanger.
Happy, sad memories, but the memories of that holiday make me smile. She was there with us, all through my pregnancy with Florence I was so happy, and I always felt she was with us, already part of our family...she was. (is and always will be)
When I think of those days, I sing this song in my head.