I place your baby sister to sleep, night after night in your cot, and think in disbelief that we did just the same thing with you 18 months ago.

We kept your cot - determined not to be superstitious, but needing something to change. We stripped, scrubbed and sanded the dark varnish off every little slat of oak for what seemed like days, as if this act alone could erase the horror of the image it contained.

If I had known what the morning held for us, maybe I would have read your story a little bit slower. Maybe I would have hugged you for that little bit longer, savoured your soft, puppy skin and breathed you all in, so deeply, just that little bit more.

It had been a long day and I hoped that you wouldn't kick up a fuss going to sleep. If I'd known the future, maybe I would never have let you close your eyes, never put you down. Maybe I would have looked at your beautifully alive face just one more time.

You've been gone from this world for as long as you were here. 18 months is not such a long time, yet oh so limitless.

So many days I think we are fine. And we are, we are fine - after thinking that we could never ever be happy again, we have so many happy moments. We are immensely grateful for the here and now and what we have in this moment. We live more in the now than we used to. We savour, slow down and breathe. Deeply. Often.

But deep deep down, I know we will never be the same people and that this world will never be what it was for us before.

You should be three.

I like these images taken of you with my lomo film camera - you were 15 months old and sitting still for even a split-second was not an option. We made friends with pretty much eveyone on the beach. The soft, grainy, bluriness of these echos some part of our new world.