I’ve touched on this subject before, but as with all things involving grief, life has changed and my thoughts and feelings have changed with it. I wrote in Eggshells that my world had polarised into black and white, with no grey any more. At one end of the spectrum was death and everything else was at the other. Put simply, if whatever was happening didn’t involved someone living or dying, it wasn’t important. That view still holds true, but isn’t quite as stark as it was then.

The life or death end of the spectrum is still pretty small, but there are now a few ‘charcoal’ areas along with the black. I’m listening to the radio news while writing this and an article illustrates the point well. Harry and Megan have named their new baby Lillybet without asking permission from HM The Queen and the BBC seems to think that it is newsworthy. My view is simple - so what? - not only is it unimportant, but why is it the lead news item?

Evie’s death has given me a very different perspective on life. I don’t get wound up by the news, vaccinations or my own health. The only things that matter to me now are those very personal things associated with Patsy, family and Evie’s Gift. Friends find it strange that I’m not ranting over lockdown restrictions. That I don’t feel aggrieved at the perceived loss of personal freedom. But you know what, when you have stood at the bottom of your 13 year old daughter’s bed as she took her last breath and died, nothing else comes close. NOTHING! I simply don’t care. Interestingly as an aside, the social isolation of lockdown didn’t impact on us as we were already isolated, abandoned by so many. the rest of the world joined us - ‘welcome to my world’. So I’m not going to expend energy on it. For the second time in my life I have been diagnosed with a benign form of skin cancer and I don’t give a sh1t about it. It is what it is. If left untreated it could become a bit nasty, but that’s as far as it goes. I had to be nagged to go to the doctor.

How I live my life is now more important than many other things. Evie may not be here, but my role is to carry forward the memory of her, doing what she may have done. Looking after others, looking after wildlife and generally not being a lousy person.

Her death has given me a clarity of vision, not through rose-tinted spectacles, but through pink-tinted ones, because even at 13 she loved pink and wasn’t bothered what others thought. The last 12 months have been a challenge in so many ways but I learned something quite valuable when you come up against people that place their own interests ahead of those around them. If you go toe to toe with a bereaved parent, you will lose because we will stand our ground and grind you down. We have experienced the single worst thing that can happen to a parent and so nothing else matters. We have nothing left to lose. The clarity of vision is a gift as it helps me stop wasting time and energy on things that I can’t change, or don’t deserve my time. But ….. the cost of that vision is too high.