This is not my most cheerful post, and that’s saying something. You have been warned.

There are things you dare not think. There are thoughts that keep you up late at night. There are nightmares so terrifying that you wake up with a chill. All three of those can’t compare to the incredible loss you feel when someone you love, adore and cherish beyond measure. I’ve tried several times to write this since the event, and each time I’ve failed. The words have failed me. The last time that happened was when I lost a cousin six years ago, and here we are again. Maybe because I can write this now means I’m moving on, or at the very least coming to some form of acceptance.

On October 12th, my little cousin died of a brain haemmorrage. She was 7. These things just don’t happen. It doesn’t fit into how you picture the universe. Someone with such spark, such creativity, such enthusiasm for life, such a bright future ahead of her (not to mention such an obsession with all things Scooby Doo related) just can’t stop being there like that.

It’s still not real. It won’t be for a very long time. I still plan things to buy her, trips to take her on, stuff we can do together the next time I’m there. As her mum put it, she’s just visiting her grandma or out at school or with friends. She’s going to walk through the door any second, or she’ll call. I can still hear her voice in my head from the last time I called her. On the day she died, I was thinking of her - one week later would have been her school half term, and I was taking the whole week off work. I was going to babysit her for two days while her parents were at work, and I had it all planned. I didn’t get to see her often, and the pair of us were looking forward to immensely.

And then… I got a call to say she was in hospital. She had been fine until the day before, then a headache suddenly came on and she sat down because she couldn’t stand up any more. She never got up again. I was on the first train I could get to, and it was the longest train trip of my life.

When I saw her, it wasn’t right. She was sleeping. It was a joke, a prank. Anything to get me home to see her. Ho ho. It’s amazing what you can tell yourself. A couple of hours later she was pronounced… four letters, and I still have problems saying them. I cried after I got the phone call. I cried on the train. But when I got to the hospital, I went numb - the universe just stops because what you’re seeing isn’t real. And then when we went back to their house later that evening, everything was as it had been left the night before when she had suddenly become ill. Her school things on the table, her homework and doodles on the whiteboard, and her room a snapshot in time. I didn’t cry again for four days… until I stood in her bedroom doorway and suddenly felt a loss I couldn’t begin to describe.

Abi was such an abundant source of life. Again, to borrow from her mum - she wasn’t a frilly girl, but she was a pink girl. So it was fitting that everyone at the funeral was asked to wear some pink, and pink balloons were let off afterwards. 7 lots of 7 balloons, for a 7 year old with such an amazing enthusiasm. It was infectious. You couldn’t stay sad for long around her, and she had such an amazing way of looking at things. She was bright, she was cheerful, she was adorable, she was the only seven year old I knew who would spontaneously burst into the Hallellujah Chorus, or giggle along when I played the Toccata and Fugue, and I am going to miss her so very much.

Abigail Brenda Iles. June 3rd 2000 to October 12th 2007.