On the 6th July, 2012, Adam would have been 5. If he’d lived. If he’d not been born so prematurely.
This year I am trying so hard to remember the good moments. To celebrate instead of mourn. It’s pretty hard because, you see, there weren’t really any good moments. His short life was a constant fight, and the lasting memories of my time with him are incredibly painful.
But I will talk about him because he will always be part of our lives. A part of me died when he did.
I miss you Adam and I love you.
And for you, the readers, I am sharing the reading from his funeral and the poems (I found them online and adapted them a little), and the song list.
I will remember him always, and love him always and will most likely always shed a tear for him on his birthday for all the things that could have been.
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Song List
This is the list of songs and why we chose them
For the parents
These songs are all chosen for the sentiment in the title and the words and how we feel about Adam.
1. I Miss You – Blink182
2. Fix You – Coldplay
For Adam
5. I don’t feel like Dancin’ – The Scissor Sisters
Whenever we went in to see Adam he was always quite active, waving his arms around happily. Paul and I both would have this song playing in our head as we stood next to his incubator, so we felt it was just right for his funeral
6. Like a Star – Corrinne Bailey Rae
He was like a shooting star in our lives – we went “ooh” and “ahh” when we saw him but he was not there for as long as we would have liked.
7. Lovecats – The Cure
An upbeat song. We used to tell him stories of Smurf (our cat) but he never had a chance to meet him. He would have liked Smurf a lot.
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READING
Adam was born on the 6th July, having just made it to 26 weeks and weighing only 1 lb 6oz. In reality, Adam never really had any chance of surviving. His scans had shown that his body was well under-developed and despite steroid injections before birth, when he was born his lungs were nowhere near mature enough to cope. From day 1 he was kept alive by machines.
So we ask ourselves, why did he live and fight through 4 weeks if this was the case? Adam proved to be a bright light in our lives. He may only have been with us for a short while, but in that time we watched him grow and mature and develop a lovely personality. From his beautiful blue eyes opening, his blonde hair coming through – to him waving his arms and squeezing our fingers – Adam came rushing into our lives and made an immediate and huge impact, despite his tiny size.
We learnt a lot from Adam. We learnt what it feels like to love so unconditionally that you would do absolutely anything for him. We learnt that we could be “Mum and Dad” and that it was a very comfortable label for us both. We loved to see each other with Adam – Dad telling him stories and promising him everything we owned if he would just keep fighting and come home with us (he even promised him Marguerita’s house!) – Mum sitting and reading him Harry Potter just so he could hear her voice, changing his nappy and him weeing on her like all little boys do, having a cuddle with him when they changed his incubator. We learnt that we are a great team, and that we could support each other through what seemed like impossible choices. That we worked together to make it through what, at times, felt like the worst form of hell. We learnt all of this in 4 short weeks because of Adam. Because despite an impossible mountain to climb he kept fighting as long as he could, and because he was an adorable, beautiful boy. We loved him absolutely and unconditionally and fought to give him the best chance possible but also always watched out that he was not allowed to suffer.
Adam died at 1:50am on the 5th August, aged only 30 days. In the end, he died happily in his Mum and Dads arms. He had a perforation in his stomach that could not be recovered from and had caused him quite a bit of pain. If he was allowed to carry on, it would have become intolerable. We would not allow him to suffer. In the end he was not in any pain because he was on enough morphine to make sure of that. We held him in our arms and he had his eyes wide open and was sucking on his tube happily. He squeezed our hands tight as he had always liked to do. When we switched off the ventilator he did not even manage a single breath – confirming that he never really had a chance. We held him close until his heart beat for the last time and he eventually died, a happy, comfortable and very much loved little boy.
Although these last 4 weeks have felt like a living hell, we have been very lucky to have Adam in our lives. We know in our heart of hearts that even if he had lived, after what he had been through, he would have been damaged and could not have had the quality of life that we so wanted for him. Hard though it has been, we know that this was probably the right time to go.
We will love you forever and always our beautiful baby boy.
Mum and Dad XXX
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Remembering You
We thought of you today,
But that is nothing new
We thought of you yesterday
And will tomorrow, too
We think of you in silence
And make no outward show
For what it meant to lose you
Only those who love you know
Remembering you is easy
We do it everyday
It's the heartache of losing you
That will never go away.
A poem for Adam
Sweet Adam who we never really got to know,
It’s hard for us to let you go.
We waited and we wanted you.
We had so many dreams for you.We think of smiles we'll never see.
We think of events that will never be.
No first steps and no first teeth.
There is only a void and our own grief.We planned to take you to places far and near.
To keep you safe and free from fear.
To show you much of your new world.
To teach you as your life unfurled.It’s hard to understand why our wee boy died.
We feel numb right now, so many tears cried.
So many questions and no answers seem to come.
We tried so hard to save you; nothing could be done.And here we stand, broken-hearted
And wonder why we must be parted
from our child we can no longer hold,
who will always be with us, even when we're old.At least we knew as he lay in our arms.
No more can he suffer any harm.
Bless him always and bless us too.
He’s in our hearts, we’ll make it through.
