‘Please mommy, it’s time to wake up!’

In what could be said to be one of the most disconcerting stories of the new year, a 3 year old child is believed to have valiantly sat by his mother’s side during the Christmas period thinking she was just asleep as she actually lay there dead.

dailymail.co.uk; A three-year-old boy is believed to have spent days over Christmas sitting alone by the dead body of his ‘sleeping’ mother in the hope that she might ‘wake up’.

At one point, his grandfather telephoned but the young child calmly told him ‘mummy’s asleep’.

It is not known what the boy did for food and drink.

The heartbreaking tale unfolded in the French town of Loison-sous-Lens, in the northern Pas de Calais region, where Emilie Decroix, 28, collapsed.

Which so much hints at childhood innocence and at the same time childhood naivete. Naivete, that for this one child has been shattered in one of the most profound way possible.

Work colleagues in the nearby town of Lens presumed the single mother was off ill and unable to call in.

Instead an aneurysm, or weak bulge in an artery wall, had ruptured close to her brain, causing the office worker to die suddenly.

‘Emilie lived alone with her little boy who clearly believed she was sleeping and might wake up,’ said a police source.

‘Before the ruptured aneurysm, she would have had all the appearances of a young, fit woman – the child could clearly not envisage that she might be dead.

But as most adults know, appearances can be very misleading.

The child’s grandfather finally called round to the house on New Year’s Eve, where he found her dead body, with his grandson sitting quietly next to her.

The source added: ‘The cause of death was quickly established, but the exact time of death is not yet known.

‘Nobody knows exactly when Emilie died, but it is likely to have been before Christmas.’

Perhaps what makes this tale so profound is a child’s inherent innocence and naivete and yet at the same time- it’s exactly what makes its shocking and leaves us gasping.