When you reach my age, a lot of your peers have lost someone. A parent, a spouse, a sibling; the only 2 certainties in life are death and taxes.

As we age we attend more funerals than weddings and I have many friends who have lost their husbands to cancer or other illness. They are called widows and get lots of sympathy.

However I don’t know any parents in my immediate friendship circle who have lost a child. Those friends are mostly online in my support group where we can share our unique grief as parents who have lost a child to suicide. Some many years ago, like myself, and some who are facing their first Christmas without their child at the lunch table, and with no presents for them under the tree.

I’m working as a Christmas temp at M&S this year and it has been a life-saver for me. Mixing with mostly happy people as they shop for Christmas outfits and food has been a welcome distraction as my heart fills with dread every year as we approach the big day. Toby’s birthday is the 22^nd, he was due on 29^th but arrived a week early.

On the days I’ve been at home I have reflected on how at Christmas our emotions are heightened. Every sad memory feels ten times sadder. As I got out the tree and decorations, every bauble with a memory brought on floods of tears.

Toby had made a little decoration at primary school – a circle of silver card with pasta sprayed silver stuck on it. As I retrieved it from the box which had been in the shed, it disintegrated in front of my eyes. I wept inconsolably – why hadn’t I taken better care of it – I can never get it back. I put all the pieces in a piece of tissue and its now in Toby’s memory box.

One year I bought a bottle of Baileys and it had a novelty gift tag attached as a free gift. You could record a little greeting for the gift recipient to play. I recorded ‘Happy Christmas Toby, Ho Ho Ho!’ and attached it to one of his gifts. Every year when I find it in the box I play it and cry – knowing one year its battery would expire. Well this was the year – it must be about 20 years old ……. another trigger for floods of tears. I have a picture of Toby lying in bed with his Christmas hat on pretending to be asleep – it is almost unbearable to look at, but I do.

On the day I went into labour I was in bed watching ‘Meet me in St Louis’, which features the song ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas’, ‘Someday soon we all will be together – if the fates allow’, I’ve been hearing it everywhere.

All these memories and emotions can feel overwhelming – but I remind myself they are just a testament to how much I loved him. I’d probably still feel some of those emotions if he was still here, but of course they feel a hundred times worse at this time of year.

The TV is flooded with inspirational stories, even Strictly this year featured 2 contestants who had suffered losses, one of a mother, the other of a husband. A child without parents is an orphan, a spouse without their other half is a widow or widower…there is no label for a parent who had lost a child.

Instead of asking people if they are ready for Christmas – we should ask if they find Christmas difficult or joyful and then act accordingly. I’ll have a quiet day, a walk on the beach – maybe a drink in the pub, then I’ll breathe a sigh of relief that it’s behind me for another year.

As we navigate Christmas, whatever our circumstances, recognise that these emotions are part of us – not to be stifled or swept aside. Embrace the sadness as it reflects we had a child we loved more than anything and that we miss more than anything. As our late Queen Elizabeth said ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’.

For my regular followers you will know I always come back to this quote from Wordsworth in a letter he wrote to a friend following the death of his young son Thomas.

 I loved the Boy with the utmost love of which my soul is capable, and he is taken from me – yet in the agony of my spirit in surrendering such a treasure I feel a thousand times richer than if I had never possessed it.