coast to coast for Charlie

Today was day one of our challenge to walk from Blackpool to Scarborough.  We drove up to Blackpool on monday evening and eventually settled in our motor home by the side of the coast road. We had an unsettled night what with the noise from the traffic and the rocking motion of the van every time a car drove by. We even had some lovely drunk people bang on the side of van. We all woke at 7 am and made sure a good breakfast was had. We drove down to the starting point just before 8 am and after a few pictures Gary and Dan set off.  Our first port of call was Blackpool fc to have our picture taken with New signing Jacob Mellis. A big thank you to Stewart Hudson for arranging it all for us. The lads then set off on the main journey. They set a good pace completing their first five miles in just over an hour.  They slowed down slightly over the day but not by much.  The weather stayed pretty good for us , only slight rain for a little while.  We reached our first days destination, Gisburn, around 6 pm. A good dinner of pasta and very welcome showers were had and then a quiet relax in preparation for tomorrow's leg of the journey.

Welcome to our newest editions, Charlie Bear senior and junior.. These bears will be going on travels with people for the charity and will be posting their updates and blogs along the way. The first people to take Charlie away are Charlie Arthur Curtis's Uncle, Auntie and 3 cousins. They will be making sure that Charlie bear has a brilliant holiday and will be there for them all to talk to if they are feeling lonely.

 Charlie bear junior will be joining Ruth and Gary Curtis as they set off on there travels from Blackpool to Scarborough raising money for our charity.

I'm sure both bears are going to have a great time and will have lots of stories to tell. 

Hugs

I read this and thought that if we all gave hugs more easily people would find loss much easier to bear. Just knowing that someone cares enough and wants to help ease the pain can sometimes be enough to help you keep going on. Going through grief can feel a very lonely and isolated place and the comfort of someone can bring a little light into a dark place.

Another fantastic weekend for Charlies-Angel-Centre. We have had 3 people run in the Leeds 10K wearing our charities Tshirts. This will not only raise the profile of our charity but has also raised some more vital funds for our cause. We cannot say thank you enough to the runners and it makes me feel very proud and emotional that they were running for our little man.

                                                        Stefan and Helen Kucharczyk

                                                          Daniel Smith

I found this the other day and it made me shed a tear so I thought I would share it with you.

Yesterday I loved you, today I love you more,
Keeping your precious memories will never be a chore,
Every day in waking dreams I wonder where you are,
If your sitting comfortably, my angel on a star

I often wonder if you watch my every waking move,
Or if your up there giggling and dancing your little groove,
I wonder if your close to me, or watching from afar,
I know you'll keep your eyes on me, my angel on a star

I wonder if you will remember each tear upon your face,
And give me great big cuddles while watching the human race,
When I see my friends all drinking at the bar,
I raise a glass in honour of my angel on a star

Each time your name is spoken, with kind and gentle voice,
It sends a shiver down my spine, of that I have no choice,
And when I play a little song, upon my old guitar,
I send it up to praise you, my angel on a star

But then I start all over, to hide those tears away,
So i'm not a hindrance, to someones cheerful day,
I push my pain behind a smile, and with my emotions spar,
Still I will never forget you, my angel on a star

I wish that I could hold you and cuddle you real tight,
And save from your bed bugs, every single night,
I miss that your not here and sitting in my car,
You will always be my everything, my angel on a star

Yesterday I loved you, today I love you more,
Keeping your precious memories will never be a chore,
Every day in waking dreams, I wonder where you are,
If your sitting comfortably, my angel on a star.

On the 29th July myself and my husband, Gary (Carries dad), will be setting off on a fund raising event for the charity. We are walking from Blackpool Beach to Scarborough Beach over a 4 day period. We are planning on walking for around 12 hours a day and hopefully covering approx 34 miles for the first 3 days and leaving us with a shorter final days walk.
We have been very lucky to be loaned a motor home to use for the walk so there will be a bed to sleep in, shower and a cooker. Three things that will become very important to us over the week.
We would like to think that on the route we might be able to persuade some local people to join us for a short burst of walking or just to donate some pennies.
Our journey will take us through some beautiful countryside, including Clitheroe, Skipton, Harrogate, Malton and finally Scarborough. I'm sure that we will both be very happy to reach the beach and dip our feet in the cooling waters.
If you or someone you know will be anywhere in the area during our walk please come along and say hello. We will be making regular posts to let people know where we are on our journey and we have support from other charity members who will be tracking our moves.
Every penny we raise will go towards the fund to provide a bereavement support centre, something that is so badly needed.
Throughout the walk we will both be using different strategies to keep us going from listening to inspiring music and music we associate with Charlie, to looking at pictures of Charlie to keep us inspired to keep on walking. I'm starting to feel a little excited about the walk now, not only as i'm looking forward to seeing the beautiful surroundings but also thinking the money raised will move us one more step closer to our dream.

Yesterday was an amazing day. Our first Family Fun Day was a great success. Altogether we have raised around £350. For us, a relatively small family, with no fund raising experience, to achieve this is brilliant. I feel so proud of what we have all achieved and in such a short period of time. We had some lovely people donate their time and skills and we also had some great people who came along and spent their pennies. I am sure Charlie was looking down on us yesterday urging us on. I hope we did you proud Little Man.

Today is our 1st charity fun day 12th july 2014, we are all a little excited we have some great things going on, people have been fantastic giving up there time for free to help us make this day successful, Charlie would have been 18 months old now and would have been full of life, so we have tried to incorporate all the things he would have enjoyed, bouncy castle and inflatable slide, music and hook a duck, face painting, ice cream, i think since Charlie died there has been times where i think about what he would have doing at certain stages  like crawling, walking and talking, and there are times where i feel cheated that i have been unable to share those moments with my grandson, i often look at his picture when we have achieved something though the charity looking for a sign or something to say yes that is what it's all about, and yes there have been times when i think i don't get it why Charlie, but then we receive a email saying thanks for the chat on Facebook or twitter it really helped me at a time where i so badly wanted to give up, then i no why our little man gave so much and fought so hard to try and be here today, so today is our fun day, Charlie's day and we hope that people come out to support Charlies-Angel-Centre so we can raise lots of money to move on to the next stage of building our bereavement centre.

From the minute we are born we start learning about the world around us. Throughout our lives we are constantly finding out new things and experiencing different emotions. We learn from all the people around us and everyone we come into contact.
Initially we are learning from our parents and family, we find out how we fit into the family and how we communicate with each other. We then move on as we get older to learning from the community around us and the wider world.

We learn things from how to talk, walk, eat, and interact with others. As we get older we move on to learning formal lessons like Literacy, Numeracy, History and Geography.
As we move into adulthood we learn from our peers how we fit into society and we become active members of the working world.

We are constantly finding out about different emotions and how we should react to different situations. There are still some stereotypical behaviours we are taught e.g. boys should be tough and not show their emotions  where as girls are supposed to be more open about their feelings.
We come to expect that we will have to deal with the death of loved ones but we also expect that these loved ones will be much older than ourselves and that whilst sad we will eventually feel that it is the natural way of life.

Throughout my life I have had to deal with a lot of loss of both relatives and friends and I have always been effected by each one. There are still some that continue to effect me everyday and influence how I live my life and the decisions I make.
 The loss I have found the hardest to rationalise is the loss of my grandson, Charlie Arthur Curtis. He shared his life with us for just 19 minutes and was then cruelly taken away from us. I still do not understand how someone so pure and innocent can be taken away at such a young age. When an adult dies you can think that at least they had a life, they got to experience life. How can anyone argue that it is fair for a baby or child to be taken away from its family. They didn't get to share their lives and go through normal family things.

Growing up I saw how others dealt with the death of other adults and that is how we learn to grieve and mourn our loved ones.  We see it in TV  programmes and films and we learn what is expected reactions to death.  No one ever tells you how to deal with and live with the death of a baby/child. No one prepares you for how to support your child as they go through the worst experience in their life. And in our experience no one is there to support you after the death to help you work out how to live through this.

The death of a child is still quite a taboo subject and people are often scared of talking about it, usually because they are worried of saying the wrong thing. To make it less of a taboo it needs to be talked about more and it needs to be talked about from a younger age. Children also get effected by the loss of a child and we need to let them talk about it and get out their feelings.

Our hope is for a safe, comfortable, friendly place where anyone can visit and talk freely and openly about their loved ones. We want people to feel that there is someone out there that wants to listen and support them. This is how it should be, there should always be someone out there that you can turn to when life feels bleak.

My grandson's an Angel,

That flew to the earth.

His wings disappeared

At the time of his birth.

One look in his eyes

and I've not been the same,

He's part of me now

And that part has a name.

That part is my heart

And a bond that won't sever,

My grandson's an Angel

I love him forever

Dani and Lizzy - Dancing in the Sky (with Lyrics)

C     is for courageous, so strong and brave

H     is for handsome, and oh how he was

A     is for aching arms that long to hug him

R     is for rocking him tight in my arms

L     is for love, forever from us

I      is for inspiring, his fight goes on

E     is for earning his angel wings

my name is Rhiann i am 7 but nearly 8  Charlie is my cousin and i wanted to help write on Charlie's blog so i wrote Charlie a letter

Over the last 12 months we have all taken part in and organised several fund raising events. Most of us have never had to do any of this before and initially it sounds easy when you say lets raise some money. However we all quickly found out that it is in fact a difficult thing to do. We came up with loads of ideas for events but then when you look at what it all entails it soon became apparent that it takes a lot of time and planning. We emailed and rang so many places and people to see if they could help us. A lot said they would love to but they were already working with other charities. At times it made you feel like giving up but then we would look at pictures of Carrie and Charlie and realise we had to go on. We also had responses from people who were more than happy to help us. It made us feel so proud that strangers wanted to help Charlie. Over the last year we have met and been in touch with so many amazing generous people, people who have donated things for us to raffle, a garage that agreed to fix our car for free so it could be the support car for our sponsored walk, survival gear for our walkers, free transport and so much more. It still amazes me when I look at what people have given that there are such nice people out there, it restores your faith in mankind.

When it was announced what our first big fund raising event was going to be, A non stop sponsored walk from Leeds to Nottingham, I thought I would just be the support driver. Little did I know that over the weeks my mind would decide that I was going to do the walk. I enjoy walking but the thought of walking 66 miles was hard to imagine. I think what kept us all going and determined that we would do it was the thought of the fight Charlie gave to survive. If he could put up such a fight surely we could walk 66 miles.

We are continuing to arrange fund raising events and are lucky to have had some great people who have agreed to take part in events to raise money for us. Now we have become a known charity in Leeds more people are trying and willing to try and help us.

We really have met some amazing and generous people and we hope to continue to meet more. The more people who know about us and want to help us the sooner we will have Charlies Centre up and running.

Charlie has inspired a lot of people to make a change to bereavement services and im sure he is watching over us all cheering us on.

Tonight I have been looking at inspirational words for the blog. Sometimes I find it hard to put down in words what I am feeling, I think these verses say a lot of what I have felt over the last 18 months. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have and you find comfort in them.



You are my special little boy
my grandson, my first!
And as I look upon your face
my heart just wants to burst!
Because I have so much love for you
waiting deep inside,
And as I hold you in my arms
my love I do not hide.


Twinkle, twinkle little star, up in heaven is where you are, flying high & twinkling bright, my guiding star, my shining light, twinkle, twinkle little star, my perfect angel is what you are.

And like a single drop of rain

That on still waters fall,

His life did ripples make

And touched the lives of all.

He's gone to play with angels

In heaven up above

So keep your special memories

And treasure. them with love

He was so very, very special

And was so from the start

You held him in your arms

But mainly in your heart

With a sweet remembered smile

He'll live on in your heart

Was with you just a while

Although your darling son, My grandchild

God saw you getting tired,

And a cure was not to be.
So He wrapped His arms around you,
And whispered, "Come to me."

With tearful eyes we watched you
And saw you pass away
And although we love you dearly
We could not make you stay.

A Golden heart stopped beating
When He gave you rest.
God's garden must be beautiful
He only takes the best.

I want to share some photos we have of Charlie with you all. I want to show you how perfect and handsome he is, I want to show you the inspiration that drives us all to make things better for other bereaved families, I want to show you why I am such a proud Nanna.

This is one of the first pictures taken of Charlie.

I love this pic of Charlie holding his mummy's hand

Every time I feel tired or frustrated that things are not going as fast as we would like them to go I look at these pictures and realise that Charlie wouldn't mind how long it takes. His face looking out at me re motivates me and makes me think that however long it takes we will carry on the fight.

Whenever we go out telling people about out charity, or are doing fund raising events, these pictures are what drives me on to make as many people know about us and want to help us.

We have had some amazing support from people from all walks of life and every time we get someone else to help or donate it makes me both excited and emotional. To think that people who have never met us or Charlie want to help us make a difference gives me immense pride in Charlie.