The amazing Grace and Bethany
Grace and Bethany are only part of our story. They were the best of companions singing, reading, dancing, entertaining together. We still have the very brave Grace.
The hope for this Web Log is to talk, support and give hope and some light through the valley of grief. No parent should have to bury their child. Here is a place to make comment, listen, observe my walk and the walk of others, and even to ask difficult questions.
Here is a bit more our story.
Toby Hime lived through the 2011 Revolution that deposed
President Mubarak, and the subsequent Political Decapitation of President Morsi
in Cairo, Egypt 2013. Hime means 'Life' from the Hebrew 'Chayam' Anglicised to
Hyam, then Hime. He doesn't search for kicks but has lived life fully with his wife
Helen. The Chayams landed at the Liverpool docs in 1801, promptly set up a
music store - initially sheet music and sundries, and have been influencing
music, the arts and curiously enough the Church ever since.
As well as Egypt Toby Hime has lived in England, Scotland,
Wales, Cornwall, and Kenya. As yet, unpublished he is working on the story of
losing three of his five children in 2001, 2003 and 2005 working title 'Travel
Light.' Toby talks of wanting light and
piercing beauty to be the focal point of this story of suffering and pain. The
book is hard hitting, honest; at times brutal.
He says of his grief 'As a Teacher and lately Head Teacher
ones grief, losing a child, children, is very public. Sometimes too public but
sometimes it is also a balm that so many people walk the pain with you. That
feels selfish, but humbling, and also honouring to our children who have died all at the same time - like the
triple point of water if that makes sense.'
Toby and his family returned to the UK and settled in North
London after a short stay in Oxford with his sister in the summer of 2014. They
have since returned to Westbury near Bath, which they left in 2000 to take up a
teaching post in the Highlands of Kenya. Toby - one night on top of an ancient
land-rover telling stories, was reported to say that if you have to grieve then
Kenya is a most beautiful place to walk, to plough through grief. There they lost Eve aged six months - the
noisiest, most active, demonstrative of their children - a big character, big
life. Taken with an aggressive form of meningitis - a form against which there
was no vaccination at the time. Later Solomon died at 9 weeks in 2003 born in
the UK. He received ground breaking surgery aged only 3 days old at the
Southampton Cardiac unit but had a minor complication at 9 weeks that he could
not survive. And Bethany, the first born aged six years (five days off her
seventh birthday) who had a sudden brain haemorrhage at home in Dorset 2005 and
died in hospital despite everyone’s best efforts and superb medical care.
Toby and Helen have Grace aged 13 and Emmanuel 5 years.
These are their third and fifth children respectively. Toby and Helen have a
marriage that has survived unimaginable sorrow, deepest pain. They talk openly
about losing their faith many times yet equally describe how, in their faith,
their relationship with God has been made stronger as He has dragged them out
of the mire. Toby is keen to point out that this story is not a Christian story
it is a story about joy and pain, anger and love, honesty and denial, even
humour in the darkness.
Now at a cross-roads in his career having been in education
for over 20 years Toby is writing, baking bread, walking, starting to paint
again, taking photos, playing guitar and when he has the time, continuing to teach
- and everyday trying to work out how to live with sorrow and hope.