Thanks for taking the time to visit Aran’s Memorial Page 💙

Born at 31 weeks on the 2nd of August 2010, Aran along with his twin brother Ishan were ready to meet the world. Aran, weighing a tiny 1lb 4oz came out fighting and didn't require ventilating. He was perfect. He spent the first 16 weeks of his life in special care and neo-natal units. However, while in hospital he contracted Group B Strep, pneumonia and meningitis. For both early and late-onset group B strep disease, and particularly for babies who had meningitis, there may be long-term consequences of the group B strep infection such as deafness & developmental disabilities, all of which Aran now had.

He fought everything that was thrown in his direction and finally came home on oxygen & a feeding tube in November 2010.  He was doing well & growing, playing, smiling with his big sister & twin brother in a loving family environment. He made us smile & had changed our views on parenting.  From having a perfectly healthy child to everything changing in the blink of a eye, our eyes were now open, open to change & we adapted our needs just like our amazing son Aran did.

It was towards the end of March when Aran became seriously Ill again & our life's changed forever. He went to the local hospital via ambulance where he sadly suffered 2 cardiac arrests. He was made stable & transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Having suffered so much already our little Solder continued fighting. He wasn't ready to give up just yet. As long as he was fighting, so were we. He spent the last eight weeks of his life at Great Ormond Street Hospital, he fought a good fight & in doing this & not giving up he taught us so very much.

As you can imagine this was the most difficult time in our families life, knowing that our beautiful baby boy was so sick and that we couldn't do anything to take that pain away, to make it better. We would have given anything!   With the support of the staff and this amazing hospital we were able to take our beloved son home on a life support machine to a house full of love and memories. He wasn't in pain, the suffering was over and the lesson he came to teach us was learnt. Aran sadly passed away in his mother arms on the 9th of May 2011. 💙

“The nurses and paediatricians’ at Great Ormond Street Hospital were amazing beyond words, each of them was gentle and skilled, on hand to talk to us and give us as much time as we needed. The palliative care team helped us through Aran’s last moments, making sure everything was done with his best interests at heart. We experienced warmth, friendship and love from the staff which helped us to get through each day.”

♥ It's not how much you accomplish in life that really counts, but how much you give to others.

♥ It's not how high you build your dreams that make a difference, but how high your faith can climb.

♥ It's not how many goals you reach, but how many lives you touch.

♥ It's not who you know that matters, but who you are inside.

♥ Believe in the impossible, hold tight to the incredible, and live each day to its fullest potential. Tomorrow is not promised.

My Journey so far...........................

In the days and weeks following Aran's death, countless people told me “it will get easier.”  Now, I can say that yes, in some ways it has. My son's death is no longer one of the first things I remind myself of when I wake up, nor is it the last thing I think about before I fall asleep; it no longer consumes me.

But, even though it has been an endless number of days, I still miss him. I still have days and weeks when it’s just as painful as it was when we lost him, and I still have moments that make my head spin. Child loss is a loss like no other. One often misunderstood by many. If you love a bereaved parent or know someone who does, remember that even his or her “good” days are harder than you could ever imagine. Compassion and love, not advice, are needed.

If you’d like an inside look into why the loss of a child is a grief that lasts a lifetime, here is what I’ve learned so far in my years of trekking through the unimaginable.....

1). Love never dies.
There will never come a day, hour, minute or second I stop loving or thinking about my son. Just as parents of living children unconditionally love their children always and forever, so do bereaved parents. I want to say and hear his name just the same as non-bereaved parents do. I want to speak about my deceased child as normally and naturally as we speak of living ones.
I love my child just as much as you love yours– the only difference is mine lives in heaven and talking about him is unfortunately quite taboo in our culture. I hope to change that. Our culture isn’t so great about hearing about children gone too soon, but that doesn’t stop me from saying my son’s name and sharing his love and light everywhere I go. Just because it might make you uncomfortable, doesn’t make him matter any less. My son’s life was cut irreversibly short, but his love lives on forever. And ever.

2). Bereaved parents share an unspeakable bond.
In my years navigating the world as a bereaved parent, I am continually struck by the power of the bond between bereaved parents. Strangers become kindred's in mere seconds– a look, a glance, a knowing of the heart connects us, even if we’ve never met before. No matter our circumstances, who we are, or how different we are, there is no greater bond than the connection between parents who understand the agony of enduring the death of a child. It’s a pain we suffer for a lifetime, and unfortunately only those who have walked the path of child loss understand the depth and breadth of both the pain and the love we carry.

3). I will grieve for a lifetime.
Period! The end! There is no “moving on,” or “getting over it.” There is no bow, no fix, no solution to my heartache. There is no end to the ways I will grieve and for how long I will grieve. There is no glue for my broken heart, no elixir for my pain, no going back in time. For as long as I breathe, I will grieve and ache and love my son with all my heart and soul. There will never come a time where I won’t think about who my son would be, what he would look like, and how he would be woven perfectly into the tapestry of my family. I wish people could understand that grief lasts forever because love lasts forever; that the loss of a child is not one finite event, it is a continuous loss that unfolds minute by minute over the course of a lifetime. Every missed birthday, holiday, milestone– should-be back-to-school school years and graduations; weddings that will never be; grandchildren that should have been but will never be born– an entire generation of people are irrevocably altered forever.

This is why grief lasts forever. The ripple effect lasts forever. The bleeding never stops.

4). It’s a club I can never leave, but is filled with the most shining souls I’ve ever known.
This crappy club called child loss is a club I never wanted to join, and one I can never leave, yet is filled with some of the best people I’ve ever known. And yet we all wish we could jump ship – that we could have met another way – any other way but this. Alas, these shining souls are the most beautiful, compassionate, grounded, loving, movers, shakers and healers I have ever had the honour of knowing. They are life-changers, game-changers & relentless survivors. Warrior mums and dads who redefine the word brave.

Everyday loss parents move mountains in honour of their children gone too soon. They start movements, change laws, spearhead crusades of tireless activism. Why? In the hope that even just one parent could be spared from joining the club. If you’ve ever wondered who some of the greatest world changers are, hang out with a few bereaved parents and watch how they live, see what they do in a day, a week, a lifetime. Watch how they alchemise their grief into a force to be reckoned with, watch how they turn tragedy into transformation, loss into legacy. Love is the most powerful force on earth, and the love between a bereaved parent and his/her child is a life force to behold. Get to know a bereaved parent. You’ll be thankful you did.

5). The empty chair/room/space never becomes less empty.
Empty chair, empty room, empty space in every family picture. Empty, forever gone for this lifetime. Empty spaces that should be full, everywhere we go. There is and will always be a missing space in our lives, our families, a forever-hole-in-our-hearts. Time does not make the space less empty. Neither do platitudes, cliches or well-wishes for us to “move on,” or “stop dwelling,” from well intentioned friends or family. Nothing does. No matter how you look at it, empty is still empty. Missing is still missing. Gone is still gone. The problem is nothing can fill it. Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after heartbreaking year the empty space remains. The empty space of our missing child(ren) lasts a lifetime. And so we rightfully miss them forever. Help us by holding the space of that truth for us.

6). Because I know deep sorrow, I also know unspeakable joy.
Though I will grieve the death of my son forever and then some, it does not mean my life is lacking happiness and joy. Quite the contrary, in fact, though it took awhile to get there. It is not either/or, it’s both/and. My life is more rich now. I live from a deeper place. I love deeper still. Because I grieve I also know a joy like no other. The joy I experience now is far deeper and more intense than the joy I experienced before my loss. Such is the alchemy of grief.

The truth is, I still hurt. Years later, it’s not a constant, overwhelming, consuming grief, but the little things, within which grief hides, that hit me when I least expect it. Grief is a lot weirder than we think. It doesn’t follow a logical course or conform to any predictable timetable. Yet we persist in making comments about how other people are doing it. And worse, we are constantly, secretly convinced that because our own grief doesn’t proceed according to our expectations, we must be doing it wrong.

Grief is unpredictable, widely variable, inconsistent. It’s weird because it’s supposed to be weird. We don’t cry when we think we ought to. We keep crying when we think we should be done. We get over it when we accept that we’ll never quite get over it. It takes as long as it takes.
My life now is more rich and vibrant and full, not despite my loss, but because of it. In grief there are gifts, sometimes many. These gifts don’t in any way make it all “worth” it, but I am grateful beyond words for each and every gift that comes my way.

I have Aran to thank for that. Being his mum is the best gift I’ve ever been given. Even death can’t take that away. 💙
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We got to take our boy home, even if the outcome wasn't what we wanted, he is at peace know thanks to the amazing support from GOSHCC. We fund-raise to say thank you for all of the love and care showed to us and our beautiful baby boy, we’ll never forget him or the compassion we experienced.  Thank-you to all those who have supported us by donating and those who still are. Every single penny makes a difference.

Aran's memory will always live on. True solder, A fighter until the end.
💙 Miss and Love you Always. 💙