“We love you Charlie and your legacy will carry on.”
Charlie Gard’s parents have announced they are set to get married, as his dad plans to keep the vow he made to the little boy that he would “always look after mummy”.
Chris Gard and Connie Yates’ young son was born with mitochondrial depletion syndrome, a rare genetic condition, and passed away shortly before his first birthday.
His parents have since decided to launch a foundation to support families going through similar heartbreaking situations.
The couple announced their engagement in a post on the Facebook page, Charlie’s Army, on Friday.
Mr Gard wrote:
“Just a couple of hours before Charlie passed away, I laid on his bed, held his hand and had a little father/son chat with him.
“I told him many things. I told him how much he was loved, how much he would be missed and how proud we all were of him, amongst lots of other things.
“I also made a number of promises to him. Ones that I will never break.
“And one of those promises I made was that no matter what happens, I would always care for and look after his gorgeous mummy for him.
“So I asked Connie if she would do me the honour of becoming my wife and sharing mine and our beautiful sons surname. And she said YES!!!
“When the day comes that we get married, the most important person to us will not be there, but don’t worry, he’ll be up there watching, hopefully with a big smile on his face.
“We love you Charlie and your legacy will carry on. Me and the soon-to-be Mrs Gard will make sure of it.”
Charlie tragically passed away in July last year, just one week before his first birthday.
Mr. Gard’s post also revealed that he and Ms. Yates had launched the The Charlie Gard Foundation, “in memory of our beautiful little boy Charlie”.
He added:
“We always said that if we could not help Charlie, then we would do our utmost to help other children in his name. This would be Charlie’s legacy.
“We obviously miss Charlie terribly. In his short time on this earth he brought us so much joy and happiness.
“And even though we can’t physically see him anymore, we strongly feel that he is with us every day and our memory of him continues to bring us the joy and happiness we received when he was here with us, although this is now heavily weighted with sadness.
“It has been just over 10 months since Charlie grew his wings and departed from this earth. It has obviously been an incredibly tough 10 months without him but we have taken our grief, anger and sorrow and channeled it into making sure something good comes out of Charlie’s short life.
“Charlie would not have wanted us to wallow in grief or just give up. Charlie was put on this earth to make a difference, and boy did he do that. And we will carry on in his name to make that difference.”
