Precious memories of a precious son….

The year 2020 was one of the most difficult years of our lives. We had COVID to deal with, lock downs and my diagnosis on 15/12/20.

The most significant and difficult thing that happened that year though was that my oldest son Adam passed away unexpectedly in his sleep from an undiagnosed heart condition. The whole family was in shock as it was so unexpected. He was just short of his 39th Birthday.

Adam was born when I was only 20 years old and being the youngest in my family, I had never had much to do with babies. I had no parents nearby and fumbled my way haphazardly through my first foray into parenthood. Adam used to say he was my ‘practice baby’ and that he was lucky to have survived. To which I responded, ‘we were both lucky to survive’.

I feel like we grew up together and while there were times when we didn’t fully understand each other, we loved each other deeply. Adam was a loner in a lot of ways, happy in his own company. My daughter asked me to check in with him during lockdown as she was concerned he was isolated. I rang him and asked the question about how he was coping and his response? He loved it! He was always a bit of a germ phobe and didn’t drive, so not having to go on a germy bus was heaven for him. He also felt he could get more work done without distractions and assured me he was doing just fine thank you.

His family was very important to him and he was very close to my parents, but especially to my Mum, who also had Parkinson’s as did my Dad. He helped her often with a myriad of computer issues – she wasn’t that I.T. savvy – and visited her as often as he could. It broke his heart in the latter stages when she mistook him for the youngest of my brothers and that was hard for me to see. When I was diagnosed, I said to my husband, ‘At least Adam won’t have to see his Mum deteriorate!’ He was always protective of me and I know he would have found it hard down the track watching me go through similar things to his Nanna.

So, tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of his passing and we will gather with the family here and video link to his brother, sister-in-law, Dad and his partner while my husband and I share pizza and memories with my daughter and her family.

I had this tattoo done shortly after Adam passed away. Then last year added the completed dates. I decided I wanted his name there as well, so now the tattoo is finished. A little side story, the tattoo is of fireworks. As Adam’s birthday was on 3/11 so close to Guy Fawkes, we let him believe that the world was celebrating his birthday with fireworks when he was little. It became an in-house joke between him and I. Now that story is immortalized in ink in his memory.

My darling son, love always and forever in my heart.