Because I Knew You: 11 years with Poppy

Tomorrow, it’s Poppy’s 11th birthday. Every November, as the world turns inward, I feel closer to her. It helps that poppies are everywhere - symbols of remembrance that anchor my love and grief for her alongside the memory of those who gave their lives for our tomorrows.

I spend the days leading up to it by her tree - planting seeds and bulbs, brushing away leaves, tucking new life into the earth. It is a ritual of connection, a way of saying: I still see you. I still love you. I am still growing beside you.

But I also can’t help imagining what I might be doing for her if she were here - the cake I’d bake, the presents, the party. On her older sister’s 11th birthday, I took her and her friends to see Wicked in the West End. It was a completely joyous day, and I can’t help but yearn for a version of my life where I could have done the same with Poppy.

From The Wizard of Oz to Lloyd Webber, Rodgers and Hammerstein to Hamilton, Singin’ in the Rain to Sondheim, I have always been a musical theatre addict. As a teenager, I dreamed of performing on the West End stage - ideally on roller skates in Starlight Express. The fact I couldn’t actually roller skate did nothing to dampen this ambition. My Performing Arts degree grew from that same desire: to carve out a life on stage, with my (jazz) hands.

But no musical has captured my heart and held it tightly from the moment I first heard the cast recording quite like Wicked. Such was my love for this new Broadway hit by Stephen Schwartz that I booked tickets as soon as it transferred to London. I even read the original book by Gregory Maguire. In November 2006, I was lucky enough to see Idina Menzel Defying Gravity as Elphaba. The moment was beautiful and breathtaking, but I found another song from the show quietly stayed with me and became my favourite song from the show. Less showy, more of a grower - little did I know how profoundly it would shape my life.

That song, For Good was played on Elaine Paige’s Radio 2 show the day before I delivered Poppy. Having received her diagnosis of Edwards syndrome, and with a compassionate induction booked the next day, I knew our time together was running out. I remember standing in the kitchen - my sister-in-law had taken the kids out to give me some space to be alone. As soon as they left, the song came on. I wept quietly, cradling my belly, feeling like it was being played for me, for us. The beauty of the words being played when I knew that I would soon have to let her go, yet knowing, as the song said, I would be changed by her for good. In that moment, this song I’d loved and listened for a decade became steeped in deeper meaning. The song became hers. Ours. A song about love, loss, and how connection changes us forever.

Every lyric in the song felt sacred, written just for me, carrying the weight and strength of my connection to Poppy:

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part...

These words capture the ache of possibility lost. Grief often feels like a future interrupted. Yet even in that, there is the decision to honour connection while it exists, even if only in memory.

So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart.

Poppy has left an indelible mark. Every instinct, every act of love, every choice in how I live and care for others is shaped by her. She is a handprint on my heart - permanent, guiding, present.

And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have rewritten mine
By being my friend.

Loss teaches us how to rewrite ourselves. Poppy’s brief life transformed mine in ways I could never have imagined, reshaping how I love, how I hope, how I carry life forward.

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood...

These lines capture the heartbreak of a journey interrupted. Poppy’s life felt like a comet pulled from orbit, stopped before it could reach its intended destination. Yet even in that interruption, there is movement - a trace of life continuing. Like the seed dropped in a distant wood, it doesn’t vanish; it simply grows elsewhere, in ways we may only recognise with time.

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you...

Every act of love and loss changes us, whether we recognise it or not. Meeting, loving, and losing Poppy has changed me profoundly - not in ways that make life better, but in ways that make me more present, more alive to the small and sacred connections in the world.

Because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

Fast forward ten years, and the first Wicked film was released in November 2024 -Poppy’s birth month and her tenth anniversary. The timing felt symbolic. The poppy imagery in the film, the themes of loss and gain, the bond between Elphaba and Glinda who remain connected even in separation - all of it mirrors my journey with her.

This year, as Poppy’s 11th birthday falls on the 12th of November, and Wicked: For Good releases just a week later on 21.11 (with 21 being the mirror of 12), it feels as if the universe is quietly saying, I remember too.

So tomorrow, I’ll stand by her tree again, brushing away the leaves, planting something bright for the year ahead to bloom alongside her cherry blossom in spring - the season she should have been born in.

And when I sit down to watch Wicked: For Good, I’ll know that Poppy has orchestrated a version of the 11th birthday gift I shared with her sister. She is letting me know she’s with me and reminding me of the many lessons she’s taught me - and that Wicked does too.

Love does not end. It transforms. It shapes us. Being separated from our loved ones in life calls us to live more fully, more gently, more generously in honour of those we have loved and lost. In that way, Poppy - like Elphaba and Glinda, like the comet, the seed, the ship - continues to guide me, always. And for that gift, I’ll be grateful forever.

For Good.