It's three years since you died, my darling, but every time I look at our precious baby I see you...

Three years ago, 27-year-old Gareth Wilkinson lost his battle with bone cancer.
His dying wish was that his widow Lisa, now 29, start a family.
Last September, after a single round of IVF using sperm Gareth banked before his treatment began, Lisa gave birth to a son.
As Jack approaches his first birthday, she writes an emotional open letter to Gareth...

Dying wish: Lisa Wilkinson with her son Jack, after her late husband wished that she start a family

Dear Gareth,

Sitting down to write this, I barely know where to begin.
As our beautiful boy reaches his first birthday, there is so much I wish that I could say to you.

I long to close my eyes and hear you downstairs playing cars with our son Jack — a passion of yours that he seems to share.
I want to hear his giggles as you tickle him or ruffle his soft hair.

But instead there is silence in the house, as there is every night when Jack is sleeping and I’m alone, thinking of you.

 

Three years ago, you lay in your hospital bed, after several rounds of chemotherapy had failed to abate your cancer’s progress, and we planned the family you knew you’d never live to see.

In those days, when we both felt so helpless, I agreed that one day, even after you’d gone, I’d have your child.
You found my promise such a comfort.
Deep down, though, I refused to accept that you wouldn’t be by my side, holding my hand, when I became a mother for the first time.

So when, in September 2008, you lost your battle after the bravest fight, I found it almost impossible to believe you had gone for ever.

But even in the depth of my grief, I never forgot our pact to start a family.
The knowledge that there was a new life — part of you — waiting to be created, gave me light on my darkest of days.

Of course, neither of us could have imagined embarking on such a traumatic course when we met and fell in love.

It’s a little ironic our story started in the hospital where Jack was eventually born.

Wedding day: Lisa Wilkinson, from Somerset, with her husband Gareth, who died when he was 27

It was 2003 and we were working on the same ward. I was a student nurse and you were a healthcare assistant.

All it took was a Valentine’s Day date for us to realise we were meant for each other.
From that moment on, we were inseparable. Within six months we were engaged.

We revelled in planning our future: we had it all mapped out — marriage, and a happy home brimming with children.

But that was before cancer invaded our lives.

You’d had a pain at the top of your leg for a while and went to the doctor seven times — each time to be told you were suffering from a sports injury.
In March 2006, you persuaded your friend in A&E to do an X-ray during a quiet night-shift, and it was then that you learned the terrible truth. It was bone cancer.

Your doctors were full of confidence that they could cure you, and at first
the chemotherapy worked. But a scan almost 18 months later revealed the cancer had spread.
There was nothing more that anyone could do.

The doctors might have given up, but I couldn’t. You were my soulmate, my everything.
We’d barely begun our lives together and I was determined not to lose you.

When doctors suggested freezing your sperm before you started chemotherapy, we hadn’t imagined it would be to use after you’d gone.
The treatment was likely to make you infertile, so I’d imagined we’d use it to start our family through IVF, once you were fit and well.

Fertilisation: Lisa used IVF after Jack's death to have their son (library image of IVF treatment)

But you reached for my hand and made me promise to make that dream come true whether you lived or died.
I nodded, but wanted to scream that I wasn’t letting you go anywhere.

But as it would turn out, I had no choice. You died surrounded by our whole family.
We all held you as you took your last breaths.

I could have fallen to pieces then — and on my worst days I did; but the glue that held me together was the pact we’d made in your final weeks.
I would have our baby.

I surprised myself with my determination to begin this lonely journey, which would take me through IVF, then pregnancy and motherhood.

Of course, there were those who thought trying for your baby was wrong; unnatural even.
But I’d made you a promise: it was what you wanted, and that was all the reassurance I needed that I was doing the right thing.

The road to our baby’s first birthday has been long and difficult.
For more than a year, I was made to wait for treatment while I convinced fertility specialists and psychologists that this baby was not a desperate bid to keep the idea of you alive, or proof that I was in denial over your death.

'I told the counsellors I would always be grieving for you, and no amount of waiting would change that'

 

I told the counsellors I would always be grieving for you, and no amount of waiting would change that.
Just because we were robbed of so many years together, I saw no reason to rob us of the dream we shared to become parents.

By the time I got the go-ahead in December 2009, I thought I had experienced every element of grief. But each step of the way, I missed you more and more.

Not many women sit in fertility clinic waiting rooms without their anxious partners beside them. Not many have to prove their sanity in order to earn a place there at all.

I wish I could say that I felt you with me, but the truth is I have been alone, and despite the support of our families, I have often felt it.
But I have felt extraordinarily lucky, too — lucky to have had this chance, and even more so to have fallen pregnant with the first attempt at IVF attempt, when so many women try again and again.

I was certain, even before I took the test, that I was pregnant.
And when it was confirmed, I was simultaneously thrilled, terrified and heartbroken.
We were having a baby  — but I would never see the look on your face as I broke the news.

And I knew that ahead of me lay a never-ending list of ‘firsts’ we would never experience together.
It was impossible sometimes not to be overwhelmed by the unfairness of it.
Like every first-time mum, I didn’t know how I would cope when the baby arrived.
And when, at my 20-week scan, I discovered that he was a boy, I must admit it filled me with trepidation. I was afraid he might be too like you to bear.

'Although I didn’t doubt for a moment that I wanted our child, it was hard to believe that I, alone, could be enough for him'

 

I needed strength, but grief (in combination with hormones in overdrive) sapped it from me.
More times than I can remember, I cried angry tears.
I allowed myself to become overwhelmed with fear. Although I didn’t doubt for a moment that I wanted our child, it was hard to believe that I, alone, could be enough for him.

It was in those moments that I heard your voice and felt your arms around me. ‘Get yourself together, Lisa,’ you’d tell me.
‘You can’t change what’s happened, but you can change the future.’

Jack was born at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, where you and I had met — and I have never missed you more than in the first hours and days after Jack’s birth. Nor have I ever been so frightened.

Complications meant our son had to be delivered by emergency Caesarean section, five weeks early.
He was struggling to breathe, and had to spend two weeks in the special care unit. I tried hard not to think I might lose him, too.
I couldn’t have survived the agony of losing you both. It was clear, from day one he was just like you — tall, strong and very laid back.
Perhaps it was to be expected in the circumstances, but I developed what was classed as post-natal depression — though to me, it felt more like the scars from losing you had been torn open again.
If grief is a process, I felt as though I’d been sent back to the start.

You’ll think it’s silly, but I missed you for the most mundane reasons.
When Jack and I were alone, I would imagine the relief of being able to put him in your arms — just for long enough to take a shower and wash my hair.

But now he is smiling, laughing and responding to what I say, I see your face in his, and I say: ‘Oh Jack, you’re so like your Daddy!’ Without a doubt, it’s an amazing gift, but it’s also a painful reminder.

I want you to know that he knows who you are.

'I want you to know that he knows who you are'

 

Every morning I carry him down the stairs in our new house, past that photograph of you at my sister’s wedding, taken long before we knew you were ill or had any inkling that our life together wouldn’t be a long and happy one.

I say, ‘There’s Daddy’, and Jack waves. But I promise that when he is old enough to understand, he will know all there is to know about you and how he came to be.

I’ll show him all of our photographs and share your things with him.
I’ll play the videos I have, so he can hear your voice.
And when he’s older still, I will give him the diaries you wrote in hospital, which are painful to read but will give him a better insight than I ever could into what his courageous dad went through.

Your mother, who cares for Jack once a week, dotes on him, and is frequently awed by the similarities between the two of you. For both of us, Jack has become our reason to face each day, and our reason to look to the future.
Before him, every day was a struggle.

I remember when you told me that you didn’t want me to be alone: you said that with so much of my life ahead of me, I deserved to find happiness with someone else.
And I know that many of those who doubted my decision to have Jack felt my energy would have been better spent ‘moving on’.
Something I just wasn’t ready to do.

Now, although I still can’t imagine myself with anyone but you, I feel more open to the possibility.

And I know it is having Jack that has brought me to this point. I am feeling stronger every day.

And every day, Jack is growing, learning and letting his character emerge.
It’s the most amazing thing to watch. If I close my eyes I can see you with him, living the life you should have had: throwing him into the air, or sprawling on the carpet playing with cars.
I can cast my mind forward to the day he learns to ride his bike, and you’re there with him. It is a gift to be able to picture it so vividly.

And I know that as long as Jack and I live every day with you in our hearts, the years will go by but you will never be forgotten.
All my love, Lisa x

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