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There was a quiet over the house that I cannot explain. You could feel the silence.
Before I came out of the bedroom for the very first time I made someone remove all signs of Archer. Move all his toys, move his blue fold out lounge, hide his nappies and formula.
I couldn't bare to walk out into a house surrounded by all his things - but no him.
When I think about those early days, I don't just remember them - I feel them.
I can smell the endless bunches of flowers withering away. I can head my mum cooking us dinner in the kitchen as we stared like sad zombies at the TV. Every AD that came on the TV had a baby in it and every time one of those ads came on we changed the channel.
Every time I heard a knock at the door I was convinced it was someone coming to tell us they had made a huge mistake, that Archer was fine. It never was though.
I slept on the floor of his bedroom right beside his cot with my arm through the bars, stroking the last place I saw him sleeping peacefully. I would wake up hours later with no feeling in my arm because I had fallen asleep like that.
1 year later I still lay by the side of his cot. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the roof and wonder what he though when he saw them. Sometimes I read him one of his Dinosaur train books.
The first time I ate was 4 days after he died. I could feel that my body needed to eat, it was literally aching. Every time I took a breath in I would get this horrible, sharp pain in my chest. I had no energy and could barely walk - but I wasn't hungry.
To be honest I was hoping I would just starve to death. The first meal I ate was chicken, shoe-string fries and some packet frozen vegetables.
What a strange thing to remember.
I spent an unusual amount of time on the floor. There is something comforting about laying on the floor. My life had hit rock bottom, so being rock bottom to the earth felt fitting. I couldn't get any lower than the floor.
I remember breaking a lot of things. Stupid things. Vases, glasses, the shoe-rack. I was so angry. Angry at the fucking world, angry at every terrible mother out there who got to keep their baby, but most of all angry at myself for not saving him. I still apologize to him every day for not saving him. Most of the time I have come to an agreement with my brain that I wasn't to blame, but that doesn't stop the guilt finding it's way in every now and then.
After his funeral and everything was 'done' I completely lost myself.
I closed the blinds in the bedroom and I shut myself away. Instead of banding together with my husband to look after our remaining daughter during the worst time in all our lives, I shut them out like I did the sunlight.
I was distancing myself from them because I truly felt like I was in a place that there was no coming back from. I had planned to spend the rest of my life in that bedroom, in that bed, surrounded by Archer's clothes, in the dark.
I slept all day - abusing visitors and family who tried to enter my room.
I was awake all night - drinking rum and eating valium.
Like the 'starving to death' notion, I had hoped maybe one night the alcohol and valium would cause me to just not wake up in the morning.
I didn't want to purposley kill myself, but if I did die, would it really be so bad?
I don't know when it started to turn around.
When the drinking stopped.
When the bedroom door opened.
When I started to be a wife and mother again.
It's funny, I can pinpoint the exact moment everything fell apart but not the moment it came back together. Probably because it's still not together.
It takes one moment to ruin your life and a million little moments to piece it back together.
One year on and the saying "It feels like yesterday" has never been more true. There isn't one morning that goes by that Archer is not the first thing I think of - not one single morning.
I wish I could explain to people with the most perfect words how this feels. I wish they could slip into my body just for a second to feel it, to understand it.
To know how it feels to not be able to even look at a photo of your child some days because if you make eye contact with that photo you will be taken to a place you are not emotionally able to be on that day.
To know the feeling you get through your body every time you picture him that morning - that will pop into your mind at the most inconvenient of times. There is no stopping it, no telling it "hey can you just give me a minute I'll think about this later right now I've got to pick up Ava from school"
To know the Trauma and panic that can be set off from the simplest of things. My daughter drank a blue slushy the other day. Her lips were stained blue. To most parents that's an adorable photo opportunity - to me it's a reminder of the morning my little boy wasn't breathing and hadn't been for a while.
there are a million moments out of every day that can trigger a good or absolutely horrific memory. Please know, this isn't just for the first few weeks, months or years - this is for life.
The only way I can really describe it is like being a high-functioning alcoholic. We can live our lives, drive our cars, go to work, do the school drop off and pick up, laugh with friends - but instead of doing all these things drunk, we're doing them all sad. We are high-functioning grieving parents.
So while many people probably don't remember a hell of a lot about Archer (and I can't expect them to) I remember things about him with scary accuracy. My memory is a terrible thing. I can't remember a phone number 10 seconds after I've been told, or remember an appointment I booked the day before, but I'll always remember the sound of his little laugh when we played his favorite game (which was hey I'm going to walk this way with you behind me, then turn around really quickly and start chasing you) I remember cradling him like a newborn baby as he drunk his bottle on the way to bed because he was too fat and thirsty to wait. I remember having to drive with one hand because he would only stop crying in the car if I lent back and held onto one of his feet.
Archer Oliver Strauch. The piece of the puzzle that completed us, now the piece of the puzzle that will always be missing. We can build more pieces around you, but there's not complete picture without you.
We have been very brave in the weeks leading up to you "anniversary" and I am writing this with a week left to go because I have no idea how I am going to be feeling on the 'day.' Right now I don't feel like that fucking day, the day that ruined our lives, the day that will always be blacked out on my calendar - deserves any mention.
The only thing that deserves anything is you.
My little boy, there is nothing I loved more than being your mummy and I will 'mummy you' in special little ways until the day I die.
