A freak wave is thought to have swept ten-year-old Timmy Barry to his death a year ago today.

The tragedy devastated his family and touched hundreds of people, including businesses and our readers, who rallied to support Timmy's family and school.

Here, Timmy's mother Emma describes in her own words her grief for her son and the memories she cherishes.

IT has been a year now since our beautiful Timmy died and never returned home on that terrible day.

Life has completely stopped for us, yet we see everybody else going around and continuing with their lives. It feels so strange that others would carry on, which, of course, they would.

For anyone who has had the privilege to have a child, they could only imagine our pain in their worst nightmares.

The pain of losing a child is so unbearably terrible to live through that no one could ever realise the full and dreadful extent of it unless they had lost a child themselves.

Time is a strange thing because it feels so long ago that we held Timmy in our arms.

Yet we still hear the voice of the policewoman saying that they had found a body, like it was only yesterday.

Amanda, Timmy's sister, has been very brave and continues to do well at school, always trying to do her best.

So, as parents, although feeling so heartbroken and having the worst loneliness in our hearts that one could imagine, we do try our very best to put on a brave face for her.

People often ask Amanda how we are and she replies that she does not really know.

We obviously cry in front of her but we avoid telling her of all the things that go around in our heads constantly.

Once you have seen your child in a mortuary, you always think about it, the thought that a few hours ago your precious child was fine.

Their death is almost impossible to accept.

We were, however, so grateful for the time we could see Timmy there as we know others are not even able to do that.

It was a very important aspect for us because we visited Timmy there for many days, holding and kissing him and telling him how proud we were of him and how much we loved him, just like we told him every day of his life, because he really was a totally divine child.

We will never change Timmy's room - we will always keep it as he left it.

We say good morning and goodnight to Timmy as if he was still there because that is our way of coping but the sadness of the house is always there and the quiet is so eerie that we hate it.

We always want to hear Timmy giggle or playing with his toys but, of course, there is nothing.

The hardest thing is that we cannot believe what has happened to our dear little Timmy and us.

It is so very hard to get our heads around it as we all loved Timmy so much and he was so totally adored.

We always try to focus on happy memories, like Timmy's striking red hair, which we all loved, and about all the things he got up to which made us roar with laughter.

Timmy was a unique little child - we always knew he was special from the moment he was born.

We will always be grateful for the ten years we had with him and for being able to experience the love that we felt for him.

Timmy was a wonderful gift and we know how privileged we were to have had that gift, even though the pain now is so unbearable.

Once a week I go to Timmy's school. Some of his class friends go horse riding and I help with that. I do find it hard but it is so nice to still be a part of the school.

Each time I go there I have to walk through the school hall to get to Timmy's old classroom and on the wall there is a class photograph with Timmy in it.

I always stop to talk to Timmy, saying how much I love him and asking him to give me strength to be at the school and help with the riding.

We are very much looking forward to the completion of the Timmy Barry Garden, which will be built at Timmy's old school, Hillside Special Needs School, in Portslade.

We are very grateful for the kind donations and for the time and effort of lots of people doing different things to raise money in this respect.

It has been an ongoing effort to raise money to totally revamp a semi-derelict area within the school grounds to make a garden and install specialised play equipment for use by the pupils.

Work is due to start very shortly and should be completed early next year.

It will be wonderful for the children to enjoy and lovely for us to know that there is a special place called The Timmy Barry Garden so that his precious memory and name will live on.