The 2024 London Marathon is being held on 21st April 2024. That day would have been my son's 18th birthday. Turning 18 is a time when a young person becomes an adult and they begin to make their own way in life as they gain independence. It is also a time for parents to think about how well they have fulfilled their responsibilities in raising their child and to reflect on the journey they have had together. 

Sadly, for more parents than is often recognised that journey ends too soon. I am one of those parents and after a pre-term birth my only son died while still a baby. He was 9 days old and never left the hospital. 

For those precious days my world turned upside down. While he fought for his every breath I stood outside the incubator desperate for him to feel my love. It was unrecognisably removed from the life I hoped he’d be born into. Ordinary tasks became overwhelming challenges - like finding sufficient change to pay for the car park or to explain why I wasn’t at work. Eating and sleeping were secondary priorities as I sought to maximise every minute with my son in the hopeless belief I could do something to help.

Surrounded by the kindest nurses, I listened to each word, full stop and comma in the medical reports given by the brilliantly capable doctors. I searched for a thread of optimism and indication of improvement in every update. None came. 

Each year on April 21st there is no birthday party or celebration, only a private imagining of what life my son could be having and how different the one he had was. I know that I am not alone in this experience and there are many other parents with the same, similar or tragically worse experiences. Some of those will have suffered the pain of having lost older children too.

The demand of regular training and at least four, quite possibly five(!), hours of running cannot be compared to the strength my son showed fighting for his life, but the significance of this date and the London Marathon’s association with charitable giving has compelled me to take part.

I seek to raise funds for Child Bereavement UK, a charity supporting families who have lost a child. In addition I seek to raise awareness of the hidden pain friends, colleagues or any person you meet could be living with.

Above all I seek to honour what would have been 18 years of my son’s life and to make crossing the finishing line symbolic of both the end of his journey through childhood and the end of a responsibility I have carried but never have been able to fulfill.  

By contributing to this cause you will be supporting children, parents and bereaved families to receive professional services and the best possible care to help them rebuild their lives. 

Follow my journey at instagram.com/ianrunslondon24