It’s the 2nd of July 2020. I’m writing this as a little note on the back of this painting, to mark the moment I framed over this Wild Thing boat. I’m going to frame the illustrated CHM Thanatology company certificate over this one. For a few reasons, but mostly because the time has come to step away from the little room. The Nursery. The Baby’s Room. That Room. Please Don’t Shut That Door. Norah’s Room. Norah and Ivor’s room. Ivor’s room. The Spare Room. Right up to now, our room. A space with two desks and books and space for the littlest to draw when we are working.

I’m changing these prints because it’s time to step forward.

Painfully.

Purposefully.

With hesitation, but with love. It’s not a step away from you my little wildling. It’s a step into what you are taking us into. I can’t live in a fractured house as long as we are living, building, being in our family home.

I thought we might move from here, perhaps before Ivor goes to school. Perhaps to another city, or place. It would have been easier I think, on the face of it, to pack up our fragments and wait until the hurt faded from them.

But it doesn’t, does it? It doesn’t fade, because you can’t fade. I can’t believe you can be dead for three years, or ten, or thirty, or fifty.

In dusty hidden boxes or right now.

Whilst your brother sleeps and your Dad works and I pause in this moment.

It will never feel comfortable or artful or brave, it just is. Attempts at piecing those fragments into something that doesn’t feel quite so stuck. Three years Norah. Three long, aching years. And it feels like we’ve barely blinked. Were you even real? If I stop in this moment for too long, I might never get out. I’m not letting you go my wildling child, I’m stepping into everything you have given us.