It is with great sadness that I write this post – my darling son Owen died on 28 July 2015 aged 21, after a four week stay in hospital. Owen was diagnosed with melanoma in April 2014 and was determined to continue to live life to the full but became too ill to continue with his final year studying illustration at university in January of this year.
I feared the worst from the beginning whilst desperately hoping that a miracle would occur and we were lucky, for a while the treatment seemed to be working and Owen continued to draw, compose music, play his guitar and generally be creative right up until he became suddenly, and quite desperately ill.
My sleepless nights have been filled with the books I have read and reviewed while I sought a distraction from the scary thoughts. I deliberately chose to leave the personal out of my blogging, and when I manage to order my thoughts enough to enjoy books again, this will return to being a blog about books. It has been of enormous comfort to have one place to be myself, without talking about the things that scared me which unfortunately came to fruition, so thank you book blogging community.
Owen would always ask about the books I was reading, both children have teased me about the harrowing books I read, and he would criticize my star ratings which in his opinion were far too generous!! Never having been a voracious reader Owen actually started reading the more modern classics when he completed his A Levels and he had claimed my library card having lost his and decided that the bother of asking for a new one was too much – his excellent qualities didn’t extend to being organised – and so when we made the trips to Southampton to see the specialist, he would always make sure he had a good book to read and discuss with me to fill up the hours of traveling and waiting around. The one silver lining to this desperately dark cloud was that I got to spend a lot of time with my son this year, time that I wouldn’t have been granted had he not fallen ill, and although we’d always been very close, our relationship inevitably deepened even further as we supported each other. I miss him so very much already.
Thank you to all of you have asked me where I’ve been, something I really didn’t expect. I do hope to return to blogging but I’m sure any of you who have been through a bereavement understand that at the moment will understand that stringing a sentence together is almost beyond me at the moment.
