Ellie Lexie Thompson

Nominate Billy’s Battalion at movementforgood.com ❤️‍🩹 Head to Stories for the link!

Thank you. 😊

It’s #NationalLipstickDay! My kinda day. 💋

How we raged, raged against the dying of the light ❤️‍🩹

Our love is bigger than the distance in between us ❤️‍🩹

Everything we do without you hurts, but we keep doing. We keep going. We wear our brave faces and with our broken hearts, we face the wind, just as Lucie said.

We might be in hell, but we will not pitch our tent here.

It’s nearly December.

#dipg #childloss #billythebrave

What about your dreams? I’d do anything to hear what you want for Christmas, to see you in your Christmas jumper, excited for the elves to return, excited to be opening your advent calendar, getting ready to choose a tree.

I’m glad I did those things for you because I’d never have guessed there would be a year so soon when I wouldn’t get the chance. It will be hard to open that door and see him standing there, knowing that there is only one little girl waiting to tell him her hopes and dreams.

We’re badgering friends and family to fill the gaps so she might not notice, and they’ve all been so kind.

Father Christmas is coming to our house for a special doorstep visit in December. Remember all the years I’d book an elf to the door, and you’d both be so excited?

You were completely starstruck and wholly caught up in the magic of Christmas.

Maddie has to do all these things on her own now, and I feel so sad for her—the grotto bookings, the school fair, the pantomimes...

“His beard is fake. He’s a fake,” she noted matter-of-factly, a little bit too loudly near the man in red. But your little cold face was a picture. It was probably the first time you’d really registered who he was and what he meant.

Dearest Billy,

A year ago we were three weeks into the hell of your diagnosis, but two years ago today, you’d just met Father Christmas and life was good. It was your second Father Christmas meet of the weekend. You were three and you stood there in wonder, but five-year-old Maddie was unimpressed

I’ve kept as much of you as I possibly could, and one day I will be brave enough to look through it all.

Your room’s getting dusty. But I can’t bring myself to clean it. Not today.

#dipg #childloss

I kept it all. Both you and Maddie have boxes of this stuff in the attic. Ordinarily, some might say I’m far too sentimental but I am glad I have all of these things.

The last collection of your drawings and junk modelling sits in a bright red box on top of the shelf next to your bed. A painted Thor battle hammer and a musical shaker full of orange lentils peek out from a pile of the most precious paintings and drawings.

It also feels like I’d be dusting traces of you away.

Staying too long in your room is hard. Surrounded by your life, exactly as it was, well, you might just be downstairs or at school.

All of your wonderful things.

It’s not as though I’d be moving things around or packing stuff away. All I need to do is clean, and put everything back as it was and yet I can’t seem to find the courage to do it. It feels wrong to wake up your Furby and your Baby Steve. They’ve had their eyes closed since you died.

See that cute little cluster in Earth’s orbit? That was you, and it’s my favourite part of this wall.

Your room’s getting so dusty.

I don’t want to touch your things because everything is just as it was when you left.

You were thrilled with it, although you were in a bad way. You’d just had your brain biopsy, and my poor love, you weren’t doing so well.

You did enthusiastically help me put up a few more stickers which made me so happy.

Eventually, the stickers arrived. I snuck into your bedroom and decorated your wall with rockets, astronauts, space stations, the moon and stars and a planet or two. I worked so carefully, desperate not to mess it up.

The stickers took weeks to turn up. Your wall remained bare. Pretty soon, you’d forgotten all about it; you were too sick to care. I was devastated that I couldn’t make things perfect for you.

Dearest Billy,

A year ago we finished decorating your room. You’d decided on a space theme before we knew you were sick and Grandpa had already painted a night sky feature wall and I’d ordered some pretty cool stickers. 🧵

That yellow flasher mac is still in the attic. Maybe some things don’t have to change that much.

And there was never any escaping all of the moments and choices and plans that lead me here, and even if there was, I’d do it all again to spend any amount of precious time with my beautiful boy.

I look sad in this old photo, being made to wear those clothes and sit in a certain way… But I was completely care free. I look at the girl in this photo and I want to hold her and protect her from all of this to come. But she’s me now…

I’ve been spending a lot of time this past few months looking at photos and thinking backwards on things. How much time can change everything. Today I found this. Taken in north London somewhere. 🧵

I guess I’ll keep wrapping myself up in memories of you. I remember this afternoon like it was yesterday. We could not stop giggling, you failed your tickle test spectacularly here.

Love you, my darling baby Billy. Forever mine.

#dipg #childloss

I will always wonder why this path came to our door, and why such a beautiful, innocent and loving little boy like you had to suffer so much.

…Just like those before you, and those to come. It’s all so heart wrenchingly unfair.

Was it always supposed to be this way? When did things change and why? Just a bunch of cells that did the wrong thing in the worst possible place, and now here we are, having lost you in the most unspeakable way.

Forever mine, Billy. Wrapping myself up in memories of you helps, just a little.

What a life you had ahead of you here. So much to come. A future mapped out that somehow, at some point, changed course so your time was cut heartbreakingly short. How could something like that happen? 🧵

Posting a photo of my beautiful Billy because I don’t want to use Caiden’s photo without permission.

#dipg #chidloss #fcancer