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 As yet, unpublished he is working on the story of losing three of his five children in 2001, 2003 and 2005 working title 'Travel Light.'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.