today is a special day. For many years I have taken time on the 3rd of June to remember someone very special and her family. And when I remember her, I tend to run through the list in my head of all the other families I know who have experienced the same or similar - that a baby didn't survive long enough to be born into life. Some years I am too busy to really take time, it's just a moment in the day. Other years I have more time to think  - about the gaps in my own family and the people we had hoped would fill them. What would they have been like? And what would we be like now? And the unspoken-about gaps in other peoples' families, which tell a story too. I think about the changes that have happened in our lives due to loss - I know that my whole way of thinking about life radically changed through explaining to the big (little) kids, Flea in particular, why there, yet again, wasn't going to be a baby after all. These people, who barely lived long enough to be acknowledged by the rest of the world, have still had a major impact on our lives - brought some friends closer and sometimes driven people apart - changed everything, more than I would have previously thought it possible to change.

Today I went down to the river and it was sparkling in the sunlight and it felt so right. 
This blip is for Sammy, for her parents and her brother and sister. 
It's for all of you, all of us, who've lost someone dear.