My little louie (My Experience Of Bereavement)

Member Name: littlemoo

Product:	My Experience Of Bereavement
Date:	25/09/01 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: the world lost a great person, NASA missed out

When you wake up in the morning you never thing anything bad will happen to you. You get up and do normal everyday things. Get up, get dressed, wash, go to the toilet etc..... It never crosses your mind it will be your last day.

On Wednesday's my brothers and I would wake up at 7am, get up and do the usual. There was the usual race to the bathroom and the usual moans about how long people have been in there. Wednesday were my brother Louie's day to get the post from the front door mat and bring it into the kitchen and sort it into piles for the right people, it was one of our silly little games. He was only 5 so he sometimes needed a little help. One of us older ones would read out the name and he would put it into the right pile. On wednesday's the post sorting took slightly longer than usual but nobody minded. On this particular wednesday Louie was slower than usual, everyone just put it down to him being up late the night before.

On wednesday's i would take louie to school on my way to my school, it meant me leaving 10 minutes earlier but i never minded it was my time with louie, we talked about everything. He loved the idea of going into space and was very clever. He knew things about space even i didn't know. This wednesday he didn't talk about space, infact he didn't talk about anything. I tried to ask him what was wrong but he didn't answer. When we got to his school i told his teacher he was quiet and not his usual chatty self and she said she would keep an eye on him.

When I got to school slightly late that day and had to creep into our weekly assembly. After the assembly i was asked to go to the office. This was unusual for me. I hadn't forgotten my lunch, i knew i had to pick louie up that night, there wasn't anything else it could be. When I got there my friend's mum was waiting for me. She looked as though she has been crying.
She said 'You have to go hom
e.'
I didn't want to go home, i loved school, but the school made me. I remember sitting in her car sulking, it was my groups day to cook and i loved cooking.
As we drove along in the car she said 'I am so sorry.' Of course I had no idea what she was talking about.

When i walked into the door my mum ran over to me and hugged me, she was crying and I couldn't understand why. My brother who was a lot older than me took me up to my bedroom and sat me down.
'I thought I should be the one to tell you this. Today after you left louie at school something happened.' he said.
'what happened? is louie ok? What wrong? What going on?'
he put his arms around me and said 'Louie stopped breathing, but it was unnoticed until he collapsed. By the time the teacher got to him he was dead.'
'Stop lying to me, I will tell mum,'
But I could tell in his voice he wasn't lying. Why my little Louie? What had he done to anyone?
I sat on my bed tears rolling down my face unable to take it in. I went into his room and picked up his favourite teddy and took it to my room and hugged it. It smelt of Louie, surely if I could smell him he wasn't dead?
I stayed in my room all day and all night. I waited for Louie to come home but he didn't.

The following day my mum cleared his room. She took all his toys out and threw them away, luckierly i saved a few of his favourites. She proceeded to get all the photos of him and sorted them into piles of which ones to burn and which ones to just bury. Yet again I managed to get to them before she had a chance to burn them. I put everything into a box in my cupboard. I decorated the box with a space theme.

After that day Louie's name was never mentioned. I tried bringing him up but it was obvious that it was a forbidden subject.
My parents carried on with life as normal as though nothing happened. I couldn
9;t understand it, I kept expecting him to come into my room and night scared of the monsters under his bed or him running in the garden with his football.
Was I the only one who remembered him? Was he only important to me? Why wasn't he talked about.

The other day my eldest brother came over with his children one of whom is 5 and loves space. Whiles they were playing we got talking about our childhood. I brought up Louie, and we talked about how we missed him. I found out that my parents knew he would die, he had a rare diesease but my brother was never told what it was. He too often expected to see Louie and we both hugged like we did that day.
I showed him my box of louie treasures. We sat there crying and talking about his little space games. After so long it was good to finally be able to talk about my wonderful little brother who I miss dearly. We sat and wondered what he would be doing now.
I also found out that the reason we never got to say goodbye was that my mother didn't want us to be at his funeral so we never got to say goodbye. My brother knew about the funeral after his friend told him that his mum went.

I wish my parents had just spoken about louie when it happened, just remembered him and his cheeky grin.

Louie would be 16 now.
He died 25/09/90

It feel good to finally lay him to rest. I am still angry that I didn't get to say goodbye. I don't know where his grave is but would really like to find it. I guess that will be my next task finding where it is and getting to tell him I love him and miss him.

Everybody should get the chance to say goodbye to those close to them whether it is a friend or a family member.
Talking is a great way to relive those wonderful memories and make them seem real again.

Summary: