Sunday, October 17, 2010

Happy Birthday Thomas



It's Thomas' 3rd Birthday today

I would like to have a little boy at home, who just turned three right now. It is an age that I enjoy, three year old's are chatty and they have excitement for the world, they love to be busy and they have independent moments. I love that their imaginations are are on overdrive, even if that causes them to be just a little bit naughty.

I know that Thomas wouldn't have been the usual 3 year old. He had challenges, I know that. He may have just mastered the art of sitting up by now, he would have had significant developmental delay.

We may have spent most of his short 3 years in the hospital. We would have spent many thousands of dollars on medications, equipment and aids.

We would have held our breath whenever he de-saturated because of a hypertensive event and was dangerously close to death, we would have sighed with relief every time he pulled through. And we would have thanked God that he lived every single day, thanked God for one of the best Children's Hospitals in the world being almost on our doorstep, and prayed that He would get us out of there as fast as he could.

But that didn't happen. It doesn't matter how much we wanted him to live. His little body stopped working and that's just what happened. Nothing changes that.

So, we went to the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne to "do" something on his birthday. It's a place that we went to quite often during the season of Thomas' life. There are lots of memories there. It was handy (sort of) to the hospital, we only had to get on one tram and it went from out the front of Ronald McDonald house to the west side of the market. The food stalls and delicatessens are all on the east side so it was still a bit of a walk from the tram, an easy walk if you didn't have anything to carry or if it wasn't a very hot day.

Today, on Thomas' third birthday this is what we did at the Market, we found hard rock lollies that had Happy Birthday written inside them. I managed to save 2 little pieces so I could take a photo of them.

And at 2 small cafes side by side we bought Pizza slices, Chicken Burrito and Omelet for lunch.
We bought the Omelet because it was called Omellet a Lo Thomas, and because we like omelet.

We had cake from the cake shop. We bought some Turkish delight too. Lucky we are all big people or we might have had a sugar rush tantrum brewing up by now.

We bought some little wooden toys from the stall that Thomas' other wooden toys came from, and we bought a bone carving from a Tongan man. There were buskers and even an art installation (made from vegetable boxes and chalk writing on the footpath) made by some university students to highlight sustainability. Then we came home.

It was a good day. It was good to do something different, to use Thomas' birthday as a reason to go and do something together and to speak his name.

Angie at stilllife365 posted my poem today in memory of Thomas. Thanks Angie. It would be great if you went over there and read it.

Thanks to everyone for your messages today.

3 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Thomas.

    You are missed.

    Hugs
    xxx

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  2. I am late, and yet I am not. Time is not linear. I have just arrived, heart warm, and sore.
    Belated Happy Birthday, Thomas.
    Your mom wrote such a beautiful moving poem, you are loved and remembered. xo

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