SENTENCE

Sometimes in life you get what you deserve, sometimes fate deals harshly and you’re left wondering if there is any justice in the world.

Written on my kitchen blackboard just a few weeks after my son was taken from me;
‘DON’T LET THE FEAR OF LOSING DISPLACE THE JOY OF HAVING’
and until now I have clung to that thought. But in recent weeks following the arrival of letters from Elaine’s’ solicitors, an increasing level of fear and anxiety has crept into my life, even my dreams, rendering sleep useless and ineffective. Too terrified even to answer the telephone, my stomach sickened by each flash of the answering machine, each tone of the mobile that threatens to deliver the message that I dread beyond all other. The one that tells me that I cannot see Tom; the one that says we cannot visit Grandma; the one that tells me that he is too unwell for today’s visit, cancelled until further notice; the one that says ‘we are moving away….a long way away.’
This isn’t life. No way to live. In constant fear that so little, so precious to me, might be snatched away at any moment. I sit. Cry. Try to understand. Why? But am unable to answer this most basic of questions and in resignation look deep into the eyes of the advancing hoards of desperation that tumble over themselves in their attempt to overwhelm me.

Rang Elaine tonight to say goodnight to Tom as I have done so many times before. I can hear his voice in the background, knowing and excited,
‘Is that daddy?’ but am told now that
‘I would rather you didn’t ring for that from now on…okay?’
‘Okay’
and ashamed at this surrender I feel all hope drain away, the battle lost and the fight beaten out of me.

I don’t know what I’m being punished for only that I have been punished enough now. I love you Tom