The only reason I didn't take my own life was because I didn't want to put my parents through what I was going through."Īs she tried to come to terms with his death, her mind was at first full of images of how Ricky looked the last time she had seen him alive. At times I drank myself into unconsciousness. I didn't see the point of being here with Ricky gone. "There is no word for a parent who has lost a child because there aren't the words in the English language to describe it. The shock of losing her child – who Amanda describes as her reason for living – was so profound that the next three years passed in a blur.Īmanda says: "There is the word orphan for a child who has lost a parent and widow or widower for an adult who has lost a spouse.
Although Amanda was allowed to question the male driver of the estate car, she got few answers. The force of the impact with a passing car had been such that one of his white trainers was found several dozen feet away.Īt the inquest, which returned a verdict of accidental death, it was suggested that Ricky might have been playing chicken or involved in some sort of dare. When she got there, Amanda found a medical team trying to keep Ricky alive. Half an hour later, a neighbour knocked on the door to tell her to come quickly – Ricky had been in an accident on the bypass road near the estate. When Ricky asked to join a group of friends who wanted to visit a nearby play area after school, she agreed, as long as he was back in time for tea. When Ricky died 17 years ago, she was a single mother raising her child alone on a close-knit Warwickshire housing estate. Are these images fantasy projections that extend the grieving process and stand in the way of parents moving on with their lives? Are they a ruthless exploitation of the bereaved who long for a glimpse of their child's face as it would have been?įor Amanda, 45, the picture of her son has helped her to deal with the loss of a life never allowed to reach its potential. Yet even if it's a consolation of sorts, it's still a practice that raises questions.
But while photographic age progression of dead children may seem maudlin, for some parents seeing how a child might have grown up is a comfort – a way of coming to terms with an adulthood they will never witness. The death of a child is the ultimate fear for every parent, a trauma too awful to contemplate. Every year, Child Bereavement UK estimates that nearly 3,000 children and young people aged between one and 19 die through illness or accident. The image was made using the same principles of forensic science used by police to work out what missing children such as Madeleine McCann and Ben Needham would look like today. But Ricky was killed when he was hit by a car, aged nine, on a summer's day in 1997. But not as he looks today – it's a computer-generated image of what Ricky might have looked like if he were still alive. It's a blown-up portrait of a handsome young man in a blue polo shirt, the kind any mother would be proud to display of her 18-year-old son. A large framed photograph takes pride of place on the coffee table of Amanda Beck's living room.