For you Blaze - my beautiful son

Exactly eight months after Blaze's funeral, today was always going to be a hard one. I travelled to Oamaru this morning, with a dozen of my family members and we were joined there by half a dozen of Blaze's friends.

It was the day of the sentencing for the driver who pleaded guilty to killing Blaze - drink driving causing death. Shortly after his death I was told that I would have the opportunity to present a Victim Impact Statement to the court when the defendant appeared for sentencing. It took a lot of soul searching, false starts and tears to produce my statement.

In the end I wrote 5 heartfelt pages, but leading up to this date I have been practicing reading it aloud, and I had only got to the point where I could manage the 5th sentence before cracking and blubbering. Not an auspicious lead up.

Anyway, today I managed, with the support of my wonderful family and Blaze's friends, to read my statement to the defendant and the Court. There were lots of tears on my part, and lots of long pauses, but I did get through the whole thing. I am so relieved, as I owed it to myself and to Blaze to do it. I was too focused on what I was reading to have much idea of the rest of the room but apparently there was not a dry eye in the court!

After the sentencing many of us drove down to Bushey to visit the cross I had put up for Blaze at the site of the last October's crash. An emotional visit, as each one has been, but so important to me.

Thank you so much to each of my family who came in support of Blaze, and to his friends who also came as a sign of respect to him. Thank you Leigh for the words you wrote and spoke and to all of you who contributed your thoughts and ideas to my statement.

It has been an emotionally exhausting day. Actually it has been an exhausting few weeks leading up to this - when my thoughts have all focused on my statement and the act of presenting it to the detriment of everything else in my life.