max

*late at night on the 26^th of june 2013 – two days before the one year anniversary of my mum’s death – one of my dear friends unexpectedly lost her five-year-old son. these are some thoughts/dreams i had at the time, but have only just now been able to write down...

she had been there for almost a year. if the grapevine was to be believed, someone was throwing a big party for her in the coming days to celebrate her first birthday. she had had a productive year teaching singing and hugging... quickly progressing through the ranks until she was appointed as the head teacher of both ‘bedtime-squeezy-hugs 101’ and ‘singing-at-all-times: advanced’. she had put on some weight and found herself relieved that her bones weren’t so lonely in her skin anymore. there was flesh where flesh should be and a curly mop of hair atop her beautiful freckly head. she loved her new life but she missed so many people... especially her children. she knew the first birthday party was going to be huge and that her girls would have loved to have attended. she cherished kids and made it her daily goal to let at least one or two million of them know that they were loved. there needed to be kids at the party, so she had spent the previous weeks inviting all the kids from her classes... and any others that she stumbled upon as she wandered in her down-time.

she saw him as soon as he arrived. he was much younger than most of the new arrivals which made her mother-heart grow big in her chest.  he seemed to walk taller than everyone around him... as though his little body had been carrying a weight that was too heavy and he now didn’t quite know what to do with all the strength he felt. he looked a little bit lost... as though he knew he had arrived at the wrong time. it was a bit like turning up at a dinner party too early. the people who should have been there to greet him had not yet arrived. he knew that they loved him and was sure they would want to be there with him if they could. something must have happened, things weren’t quite right. he was alone and wondered if he had the courage to make some new friends to tide him over until someone he knew arrived. he didn’t have to worry for long. it seemed as though everyone loved him there already. how strange. his mum would have loved to hear all about this day. he felt warm and protected and not even a little bit scared.

max

she knew exactly what it felt like to get there too early (unfortunately it had happened that way for her too), so she couldn’t wait to meet the new arrival. they always needed a hug... and she was the resident expert... and it was night-time, so a bedtime-squeezy-hug was well within the realms of possibility! she skipped and floated and danced and sang her way over to him, introducing herself quickly, keen to get the formalities out of the way so the hugging could begin. she loved the hug. it reminded her of the thousands of times she had practiced the bedtime-squeezy-hug on her daughters. all that practice so the hug could be perfect for times just like this. he loved the hug. it made him miss his mum, but it also kind of felt just like the hugs he remembered her giving to him. that made sense, he had been told that this lady was the queen of the hugging after all. it was the perfect end to a difficult day and so he drifted off to sleep. people kept talking about big parties so he figured he would need some rest.

they woke up bright and early the next morning and, as expected, the party was bigger than either of them could have imagined. maybe the party was for her. or maybe it was for him. come to think of it, every day after that felt like the best party either of them had ever been to.

and so here we are today, a whole year later. there was a huge party last night to celebrate max's first year and lynnie can hardly believe that tomorrow she will get another party for her second birthday. every day they know that they are missed... so they try to send rainbows and butterflies and sunshine and ocean waves and stars and bright balloons to let us know that they’re doing just fine. they feel pretty lucky to have found each other.

a match made in heaven.