7 Years

7 years sounds like a long time.  If someone said they had been in a relationship or married for 7 years I would be impressed - that's a long time.  If someone is in a job for 7 years you know that they must be pretty good at their job and hopefully love what they do.  If you have a child who is 7 years old it feels like they've been around forever, and you can't remember what life was like without them.

But when I say that Noah has now been gone for 7 years, it feels so different.  7 years of grief is a much different timeline to 7 years of anything I've ever experienced.  7 years feels like forever and it's hard to actually remember my old life now, but it also feels like yesterday.  It sounds like a long time that he's been gone, and I feel the pressure to feel 'okay' and to be 'over it' but the reality is very different.

It's much easier now in that I can go about my every day life and not have grief just sitting there all the time, but it's still hard.  I see families with children with disabilities and it reminds me of what life was like when he were here.  It was hard.  It was exhausting and it was stressful.  But it was also wonderful, and I wouldn't change it for anything.  I wish life was still 'hard' in that Noah was still here.  But now it's hard in a different way. 

During the week Jalen mentioned to me that he had been missing Noah a lot lately. It actually surprised me because the boys don't usually say that as they were so young when he died and Aaron's death often overshadows it.  As much as you don't want the boys to be sad, it was nice hearing that Jay still thinks about him and remembers the good times with him. He said that he had seen a disabled boy at work and it really made him think about him a lot.  They used to be so close, and during the week we talked about how upset Jay was the day that Noah passed away.

Facebook show memories from years past and it's been hard seeing photos of Noah's last week in hospital come up.  It brought back a lot of emotions again and the thing that really hit me was that Aaron and I were in it together. We were there through it all together and although it was hard - at least we had each other. 

I always wonder how different things would be Aaron didn't pass away as well, but I'll never know how different grief would feel if I were 'only' grieving for Noah.

I'm grateful that the anniversary of Noah's death falls in school holidays, as it means we can do something special on the day as a family.  Jalen took the day off work, and out of all of the days in the school holidays we had the most beautiful warm weather and decided to go to the beach.  We picked up Erin on the way and had hot chips for lunch, before heading to the beach.

We went to one of my favourite beaches. I love it because it has thousands of shells, but the boys don't love it as much as it means it's tricky to play cricket or kick the footy as you're running over shells all the time.

Erin and Jay found these beauties when they went for a walk. I love the pink and yellow one. 

We made Noah's name out of shells.

Kobe and Harri were very brave and went for a swim. It was Kobe's second swim of the season (he went for his first one the day we went to Bakers Beach with his cousins) and it was very fresh. 

We had the whole beach to ourselves till just before we left.

On the way home we picked up some monkey balloons and went to the cemetery to release them.  We didn't get there till about 5.30 pm and on the gates it said the gates shut at 5pm so I was in a panic that we were going to get locked in for the night! I'm sure they'll change the times now that daylight savings has started (which we are so happy about...bring on summer!).

We still miss you every day monkey.