Soro86

I'm sorry to drag this up again, but a few people have asked me to update, so here goes;

We flew out to Thailand at the end of May and met Luke with his mum and her new family. He is very settled and happy, and whilst he does understand that his father has died he doesn't seem to have an emotional understanding, if that makes any sense.

I'm glad that he and I formed a very strong bond during the time I was there, and I have spoken to him and his mum every day before and after going over. She is caring for him very well, and is currently investigating schooling options that may better cater for his autism.

Just for the record, Robert's friend had died suddenly just a couple of weeks before him and the funeral was on Wednesday the week Robert died. We had all tried contacting him by phone, skype, email etc but received no response. We all collectively and individually thought that it was because Robert wanted some time to himself to grieve. However, that aside it wasn't overly unusual to go short spells of time with no contact anyway.

We had to undergo the arduous task of going to Rob's house to collect his personal belongings. All I was interested in was documents and photographs. When we got there, the smell was very nauseating. This was worsened by the fact that Rob's house had been completely ransacked. Anything of any monetary value had been taken (jewellery, phones, computers, Luke's ipad etc). That in itself was awful, but as I said I wasn't interested in anything like that anyway. But everything had been strewn across the lawn and the floors of the house. Some things had been randomly put into binbags, so I then had to rummage through my brother's things to find important documents and photos that had always been stored so carefully together amongst the mess with people watching through the gates, and with everything that I moved another wave of the smell would hit me.

I had arranged with Rob's friend for him to be cremated, and I was under the impression that this would be done privately and the remains given to us to be blessed. The day that this was due to be done I received a call to go to the temple, where we then had to watch as they carried Rob's body up the temple steps wrapped only in muslin sheeting before placing him in an open coffin on the lower level of the temple. The rest of the service was actually quite nice, but obviously as we weren't expecting to see him at all it was something of a shock and hard to deal with. We then had a Catholic service the following day, which was lovely.

Since we've come home we've held a Catholic service here for his family and friends, which was last Thursday. Again, this was beautiful and I now feel that I can start to get some closure. I miss him so much, but now can keep in daily contact with Luke to make sure he's ok and has everything he needs. Luke is still well, his mother found it a little hard at first when I came back home as he asks for me every day, but she knows she can video call me at any time, and I've made sure she knows that if ever she finds it too much she can call me and I'll bring Luke to me for however long she needs. For those saying that Luke should have been brought over to England, it would be too big a change for him to deal with as he needs his routine to feel secure, and I wouldn't want to take him away from everything he's ever known without it being the only choice. I will be going over to see him again, but his mother and her partner have done and continue to do a brilliant job with settling him in to his new home and he clearly feels very loved by them.

Thank you for the messages of support, it really meant a lot to know that people care xxx

Luke is being well cared for. We're making arrangements to fly out shortly but need to try and scrape together the funds to fly out and give Rob a proper funeral.

Honestly? Have some respect. Rather than arguing about British v English and racism, or speculating whether the boys mother was involved and touting for gossip in now Robert died, why not remember that there's a family grieving for him, and that their grief isn't being lightened with crap like this. It's bad enough that the news reports are so graphic without all the rubbish comments too.