This week I have done some of the most personal and most powerful writing I have done on here in a long time.
It started off ok, with Kates Listography about mugs and with my boy laughing properly for the first time in a long time.
Tuesday was a blog post about a list of things I had done, and then a blog post that I went to sleep in the middle of writing and didn't get time to finish - probably because of the massive list of things I had achieved.
Wednesday was the response to the blogorhythms post by HimUpNorth in which I explored the purpose of my bloggingness.
Thursday and Friday though, were hard work.
Thursday was about going to the bank on Wednesday and sorting out life insurance.
Friday was about the conversation I had with my son on Thursday, a conversation that nobody should ever have to have, because everyone should know where their loved one has been scattered.
It's been weighing on my mind since then.
We will never know where Rich was scattered by his brother. Legally, his brother took the ashes, legally, he scattered them. I have never said any of it was illegal. But I looked into my child's eyes, and I know it was immoral. I have tried to understand, I read through that blogpost earlier and I realised how reasonable I sound, and how easy it would be to blame the brother for being a nasty person. But he wasn't, he was grieving. He was grieving for the loss of a brother he hadn't seen in 5 years, for the relationship they could have had, for the father they had both lost. But in his grief, he forgot about a 6 year old who had lost the man he worshipped. Grief does that. It makes people selfish and act in different ways than they usually would. It's why his Afghanistan medal has gone to the BG and not to the child who earned it with him. It's why the flag from his coffin is where that is, and not with the child who needs it in the States. Flags matter in the States. His medal matters to my boy. But I had no legal right to any of it, because the paperwork couldn't be found, and when it was, well, I chose to leave things as they were. I chose not to hurt any more people.
But now I look at my child, still grieving, and I think, "Why? What can I do?" I can't do anything about my situation, we will have to make it through the best we can, and we will. I have never heard from the brother or his family again, aside from a cousin of FB every now and again in a FB kind of way. None of them came to the inquest for the man they loved so much that they did what they did. I went. The boy wanted to go, but I told him it was a school day, and he couldn't.
I am proud of that child though.
Proud of the way his six year old self worried about BG before anything else when he heard the news.
Proud of the way he stood straight next to me and waited for the coffin, proud of the way he walked behind it and refused to cry, because armourers don't.
Proud of the way he has carried on, every day.
Proud of the way he went to the services of Remembrance, the Reading in, all the things that none of Rich's family had time to go to.
Proud of the way that he put his heart on the line again by loving J in the way that he does, fully aware of how much it would hurt if anything happened to J and he lost him.
Proud of the way he fights his fears of my death, J's death, how he tries so hard when we have to go somewhere, and how relieved he is when we are home safe.
Proud of the way he talks his feelings out instead of keeping them in.
Proud of the way he tries to understand what the brother did, tries to forgive him for taking the last thing we had - a place to go for Rich.
Proud of him as a Scotty's Little Soldier, a charity that helps the children of the fallen.
Proud of his spirit, his fight, his love.
I know he'll make it through, but he and I have talked, and we want to stop this happening to anyone else. Not the death, because death is like that. It happens. But this situation. We'll find a way. Because no other child should have to suffer like my boy does.
