I’ve had a couple of aborted attempts at this post. I thought it would be easier to write than it is. And I can just hear my mother asking me why I’m writing it, but I need to. You know how sometimes you just know? Yesterday I wrote a comment on someone’s blog about how I “had had” two boys. She’s probably wondering what on earth I meant and that clinches it.
I want to introduce you to our eldest son, James. As you can see, James had Down Syndrome and, as often is the case, he also had severe congenital heart defects (complete AV defect, for those in the know. And I mean complete). We had him for sixteen years, until he passed on three years ago. James was an exceptional boy - total and utter joy - and he passed on suddenly at home. We are so grateful that he didn’t have to go through a drawn out hospital experience.
The point of telling you all this is not to get sympathy (puhleeze, do not feel sorry for us!!! It would be a sorry case of Pity Waste!) but because I talk about James all the time and with new people there comes a point where I realise that it’s just confusing for them to not know! When people ask me how many kids I’ve got, I always stumble. Sometimes I say, “Two”, and immediately feel as if I’ve abandoned Jamie; other times I say,” We had three”, and kill the conversation flat. It’s hard for people to understand that I am not going to fall apart if they ask me a question. I have to explain that we knew James was going to die before us for twelve years before it happened. His brother and sister knew ALL their lives. No, it doesn’t make it easy. But it does make it less of a body blow.

Proud mothers can be excruciatingly boring, so I’ll try to keep this part brief. I just have to tell you a little about James. He was funny - laughed all the time (which often lead to copious farts and eventually wet pants, which made him laugh even more and us all beg him to stop!) He also loved pranking people. My mother has, on a number of occasions, set fire to oil in the kitchen (she now has a self-imposed deep frying ban!). One day, she had the electric jug on to make coffee and James, seeing the steam, yelled out, ” ‘moke! ‘moke!” She came running SO FAST that he stored that trick away and got her a few more times.
This photo is Jamie wearing Peter’s welding mask which he had smuggled to school. The teachers tried to tell him off, but he looked so funny they ended up taking photos of him instead!

We have many “James” words that we all use regularly. If you don’t want to share your drink, just tell the other person that it has ” ‘loaties” in it (floaties = back wash).
Being a teenager, he was not averse to slagging people off from time to time, so a frequent family put-down here is, “You a LOOSER!”
His speech was very difficult to understand, so if you are one of the people who heard me telling him off at the shops and thought I was mean, he may have just said, “oh, -hit!” I knew what he meant, even if you didn’t!
Grandma will by now be upset that I’m only telling you negative things, so I must say that James was never difficult behaviourly and always great fun to be with. He was obsessed with coca cola and we often heard the plea, “Good boy? Coke?” Yes, our good boy always deserved coke. Who could not love a boy whose dual career ambitions were to be a doctor and Santa???
So, now you all know James, too. And I can say, “When the boyS were little…” and you won’t wonder if I know that one of my children is a girl