Everywhere you look nature is waking up, sprouting, growing, budding, blossoming, unhibernating, coming alive, and giving rise to new life.
People too. Spending more time outdoors, less clothes, more smiles, no longer feeling the grey of Winter weighing them down.
It's Spring
time of renewal and rebirth
time of new lambs and playing children.
Sometimes that's a source of joy if we focus on what is,
but sometimes it's sadness when thoughts turn instead to what, and who, is not.
Where is my little girl?
No longer laughing and enjoying the sunshine.
No longer trying to ride her bike.
No longer playing on the swing or trampoline.
No visits to the park or beach.
Why can't she be part of the world's rebirth?
I want her back.
It's hard when hope survives after reality says no: there's no turning back the clock.
So we have to find other ways to achieve that renewal, and make her name live again in our memory.
We're forming a charity to make sure Shani did not die in vain, to try and do something to reduce the chance of children dying from rare and dangerous heart conditions in the future.
In our world, children are not supposed to die.
And thanks to improved health care, education and the fruits of scientific research, to a large extent this is now true.
In 1980, 12% of children worldwide died before their 5th birthday.
By 2015 that had dropped to 4.5%.
source: ourworldindata.org
In 1980, 21,026 children died in England & Wales before their 5th birthday.
And 1,785 died between the ages of 5 and 15.
By 2015, 6,998 children died before they were 5, and 523 between the ages of 5 and 15.
source: www.ons.gov.uk
We want to help make further inroads into these numbers, and enable more children with complicated heart conditions to live healthy lives.
We want to be part of the journey that has developed incredible medical and surgical techniques that save and improve lives of heart children across the world, and which gave us the five and three quarter years that we had with Shani.
We want to help kids with magic hearts.
We want to shine for Shani.
