A week after my mum’s 30th birthday, my brother died. I don’t remember this because it was 42 years ago and I wasn’t there to make a memory. Thomas was only nine months old and I wasn’t born yet. The strange reality I’ve come to accept is that if he hadn’t died – in an awful accident that haunts my parents and siblings still – I’d never have been born.
Thomas was a happy, sweet baby. In the too-few photos we have, he is smiling and dimpled. He looks like my other siblings and me. The pictures are all hard copy, small with round corners, slightly yellowed. In one he grins over my mum’s shoulder towards the camera and she gazes at Tom’s face in turn. I wish I could say exactly the right thing to save them both.
