You. My answer will always be you when they ask what I am thinking about.

This will be our second Christmas without Oscar and it is filled with conflicting emotions; it is Milo’s first Christmas and my 40th birthday, but it is also the first Christmas where we are no longer numbed by the shock of losing Oscar. You see, what I didn’t realise is that the first year is not the hardest – you assume it is because of all these things you have to do as a first without your loved one. But the hardest is now and forever, when you realise you don’t just have to go through the “first Christmas without, the first birthday without, the first school run without, the first holiday without” This is our forever without Oscar, every day and every milestone for our family.

Ian and I went Christmas shopping with Milo the other day and I had written a list of the usual suspects that I still needed presents for. What I didn’t realise was that Lucas had taken it upon himself to correct my list with his Christmas wishes as he and his brothers were missing off it. So there was Seb getting feefer ponts (FIFA points), Lucas wanting mach artax (Match Attax) and Milo having sox (a pair of socks I guess, not an exciting Christmas for him!) and then there was Oscar on his list, with just ‘Oscar back’ written after his name.

A few days earlier we had gone to town for a family day out just enjoying the Christmas atmosphere. Later that night Seb asked how we would have done that if Oscar had still been here. I wasn’t really sure what he meant, so he explained that with Milo’s pram in the back of the car there wouldn’t have been room for Oscar so how would we have gone to town as a family?

It is not only Ian and I who have Oscar in our mind with everything that we do, the boys thankfully (but painfully) have, too. It seems a blessed pain we will all have to live with for life.