How I was told my little girl was gone..

They told me Hannah had died in a tent adjacent to the tent that we had slept in.  At first I could not remember, I couldn’t remember anything from the morning except seeing Phil scratching the side of the tent.  It is now a memory burned into my consciousness that flashes at me and takes my breath away.  

I want to go back in time and react differently which is mad because of course if I could go back in time I would go that little bit further and change everything that happened, my little girl would still be here but obviously I can’t. 

These flashbacks appear at any time.  I can be driving my car down the road and it will all of a sudden consume me, I have been caught out at my desk, at the shops, it happens all the time like I am there all over again, like I am sat there with my oxygen mask on with a man who was not a paramedic, I think he was a fellow camper from another tent telling me to breathe and to keep my oxygen mask on.  

The paramedic comes into the tent and tells me Hannah has gone and I say okay?  He asks me if I understand that they could not save Hannah and she has died and I nodded again and whispered okay.  He says for the third time, “Mrs Jones, I am really sorry but your daughter has died are you sure you understand what I am saying” and I whisper “yes I do”.

Okay???????????? WHY did I say that?  Why did I whisper okay because it wasn’t okay?  It was as far from okay as it could really be? Okay? no it is not!  I can no longer say okay without being taken back to the worst moment of my life.  

A week before Hannah died we went for a big walk near where we live through a wood alongside the River Dean.  We followed the River all the way down to the Bollin valley where the Rover Dean meets with the River Bollin.  There is a big pipe that runs part of the way of the walk that is big enough to balance and walk on.  

We were walking on this pipe and I was walking behind Hannah but there was a bramble bush sitting over the pipe that we had to get past.  Hannah kept yelling and laughing because she was being prickled so I wimped out and jumped down, it is this vivid image of her being prickled and laughing that I focus on when having these flash backs.

Hannah following Phil on the pipe along the River Dean

I was taken to hospital in an ambulance with the blue lights on.  Phil had been taken in a separate ambulance but we were placed next to each other in A&E.  I was then told by a pediatrician that Ben had been taken in an air ambulance and was under sedation in intensive care, they said that they were doing everything they could but there was a chance he could have suffered from some damage to the brain of which they would not know until he woke up.  Thankfully he was okay.