Friday Focus 14/04/2023 – Love

It’s five years today since Jessica died and in honour of my beautiful big girl, I’ve chosen love as my word of the week. Jessica might have only had half a working heart but it was a heart that absolutely overflowed with love and I will always feel hugely blessed to be her mummy and to have had the joy of loving Jessica and being loved in return. Grief has been heavy this week in the days leading up to this anniversary, but I know that the heaviness of that grief also reflects the depth of my love for Jessica, and that the love we have for her and that she had for us is something that death can never take away. She’s with us in our hearts and in all the beautiful memories we have.

 

This week I’ve used Jessica’s handwriting to illustrate my word of the week along with some drawings that she did of our family. I love that even though she never got to meet Thomas, he’s included in her drawing of our family – baby ‘Peanut’, as she would have known him. I’ve been looking back over some of Jessica’s drawings. She liked to copy some of the things from my sketchbook (which included some of my words for my weekly blog posts) and included some of her own words. I think the top one might be ‘school’, and then we have ‘mummy’ (who seems to be burning something in the kitchen!) and ‘weather’.

 

 

Today we’ll be sharing some of the joy that Jessica gave by doing things to make people smile and #givejoyforJessica in her memory.

 

 

It has been a tough week with the painful memories of those last few days with Jessica but there have been reasons to smile too. We had a weekend of fun activities that we knew Sophie and Thomas would love and of course there’s been plenty of chocolate from all the Easter eggs too! Sophie’s had a very busy week with it being show week for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and having technical and dress rehearsals in the theatre, plus she’s also been competing in a dance festival as well. The sections for her dances have fitted in quite well around rehearsals so she’s managed to do both. Today she has the final dress rehearsal before the first performance this evening. She’s very excited about doing the show and I can’t wait to see her in it. I know Jessica would have been very proud of her too.

 

 

What I’ve been grateful for this week:

 

 

• Day 97 – I am grateful for everyone who helped make today’s Good Friday Passion play happen.

 

• Day 98 – I am grateful for a ride on the Easter Eggspress at Ruislip Lido to see the Easter bunny.

 

• Day 99 – I am grateful for an Easter Sunday filled with love, moments of joy and time together as a family. We had our Easter egg hunt at church today between services and then an afternoon out at Northala Fields enjoying the sunshine and trying out fishing for the first time.

 

• Day 100 – I am grateful for a quiet day at home.

 

• Day 101 – I am grateful for Daddy taking over bedtime this evening.

 

• Day 102 – I am grateful that Sophie coped well with a busy day of dance festival in the morning followed by an afternoon and evening of rehearsals in the theatre.

 

• Day 103 – I am grateful for some time looking through Jessica’s notebooks. She loved writing out stories and drawing. This is one I hadn’t remembered seeing before – writing out the lyrics to “Get Back Up Again” from Trolls.

 

 

Other things that have made me smile this week:

• Going to see Sister Act with Sophie.

 

 

• Doing the planets trail at Ruislip Lido.

 

 

• A trip to the funfair. Sophie was very happy that she’s now big enough to go on some of the faster rides now.

 

 

 

• A surprise package with this lovely little rainbow badge reminding me that the storms of grief will ease up. Thank you so much to whoever sent it.