The photo gallery has now been updated. The song is by Mindy Smith. Hope you like it!

As I write this update it has been almost 8 years since Gemma went to heaven. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that she has been gone such a long time. That in itself is painful… people begin to forget anniversaries, birthdays and special dates, and all of a sudden Gemma seems to be just a distant memory. I find this very hard. Of course in reality it’s not that Gemma is now less important to people, it’s just that people are busy with their own lives. I once read a book which stated that “the only thing that a bereaved parent ever wants to hear is the name of their child being spoken”, and this sentence is so true. There are a few people that make a point of still talking about Gemma and keeping her part of our lives and to those people I am truly grateful. In particular one person springs to mind; a parent who’s child was in Gemma’s nursery class. Whilst I never knew him very well, I still see him in the village where we live and he always speaks to me, and says to his son “Do you remember Clare….. you were in Nursery with her little girl Gemma……” This makes me so happy.
As time goes by some things do get easier. It becomes easier to do the ‘normal’ day to day things without feeling always sad (or feeling guilty for feeling happy). That’s not to say that I don’t think about Gemma everyday……. I do. What I also find strange is that as time moves on you make new friends, change jobs etc and yet these new friends who are now part of my life don’t know about Gemma, and consequently don’t really know anything about who I truly am. When people ask me how many children I have I still stumble….. I want to say three but of course I can’t - I have to say two and then feel instantly guilty for ‘denying’ Gemma in this way.
In time it also becomes easier to recognise the wonderful things that we have been given as a result of having Gemma. I must mention the very special friendship that we still have with Sue and Gill. If Gemma hadn’t have been ill we would have had no reason to ever meet these wonderful people, our best friends, who are now firmly part of our family. And it’s also easier to see how special some of the times with Gemma were, even though at the time they seemed so sad. When Gemma was really ill, just before she died, Nick and I used to do ‘shifts’ at home. Nick would sleep from midnight to five in the morning, and I would go to bed at five for a few hours. During that time between midnight and five, that was ‘my time’. I would lie with Gemma and sing to her, stroke her hair and tell her how special she was. It felt like there was only us awake in the whole world. How lucky I was to have shared that closeness. More than anything in the world, I would give all that I have to have just one minute of that time with my Gemma again.
Life is so different for us now. Sam will soon be 7 and Caitlin is 4 and starting school in September. Family life is busy, noisy, hectic, tiring. Just how it is supposed to be! Sam is a very bright, sensitive and loving little boy. He tells me he wants to be a baker when he grows up (although I have tried to persuade him that teaching or accountancy might have better prospects!) Caitlin is the most independent of the two. She likes dressing up, princesses and High School Musical. She is such a determined little character……I can’t imagine how we are going to cope with her as a teenager! I see many years of mother/daughter arguing ahead - we already have a daily argument over her choice of shoes for nursery and she is only 4!
I will continue to update the website, and will hopefully add some pictures of Sam and Caitlin in the near future. If you would like to get in touch by email, please do. Alternatively you can leave a message on the message board. Thanks for visiting!