21/12/2014
Well it's been a tough old year which has disappeared in a flash! At the start of January my best friend and partner of 41 years went to be with the Lord... I can't be sad although I miss him to the moon and further.... Because he just went to sleep!
He had fought valiantly for six long years after a heart attack had left him with congestive heart failure. He was really fight tired and we had talked over Christmas and made plans and promises for 2014..... We had discussed that if he thought that he needed to go home then I had to love him enough to let him go.... Hard for folkies to understand but as practising Christians we knew he would be well taken care of and out of pain and struggle.... Praise and thank you Jesus.
So then my journey began... A year where plans had been made for our home, travel, health, weight loss....... The normal folkies would say but our normal was never normal?
From the day we married we started a journey few people enjoy or not as the case may be.... My hubby's Mom nicknamed us the preverbial nomads!
Married 41.25 yrs, 3 kids, 13 grandchildren, 5 countries, lost count of homes we have occupied, so plans for a bungalow home gave me a hope and a future...... We travelled the world whilst married with his job... Our kids where educated in the best schools as expats, because he was a General Manager we dined and associated with the rich and famous... A wonderful life style I hear you say, sometimes but most times we would have liked to have been a one home, one country family with holidays at the seaside and lifelong friends along the way....
Our lives touched and have been touched by so many... We still communicate but we all dispersed to other countries around the globe to settle at last but I wouldn't swop what we did, the places we have been or the experiences that we shared as a family. Our kids learnt to depend and befriend each other as for most families that are expats they only have each other as the constants in their lives.... Our kids are wonderful well rounded grown ups with kids of their own who also love each other and share in life's ups and downs. They all have wonderful partners who love and care for them as they have seen their parents do. We are well proud of them.
Without my kids during the last 12 months I would have packed my bags and gone home too.... How important family who love, put aside differences and support each other is? I am pleased to say that how we showed and encouraged our kids to love and be loved has paid dividends beyond measure and is what parenting is all about. They have been my rock, confidant, holders of my hand when weeping from the very depths of your being in grief, from creating laughter and precious moments, to practical matters, they have all 6 of them been my support and firm foundation to carry on and fulfil the hopes and dreams that my hubby and I shared last Christmas.
I have moved forward, I have moved furniture, bought furniture, decorated, gotten rid of, replaced, sewn at my new work station (another gift of love from one of my sons in law) ."... Some people have commented that maybe you have been too quick in doing things and changing things BUT and I want to make this bit crystal clear... It may help someone in my position?
We talked, permissions where given, we planned and made decisions, so in my hubby and me having discussions last year to where I am today.... He left me a gift, a focus and most of all a plan of action to keep me occupied during the first stage of grief that I would have to deal with!
I have had to do many firsts this year. Be on my own for the first time in my life. Learning to make small and big decisions on my own, purchase a car on my own, make provisions for finances on my own, change the house and furnishings etc., on my own and the hardest part is not having him there to say mmmmmm I like that or we could move this here what do you think? I have to make the decisions etc but out of this I can at last feel that I am growing stronger, more confident in myself, more aware of my surroundings, how much folkies love or don't love each other and where they are at!
My Lord and Saviour has sustained me in the last year He has promised in His Word (the bible) that He would turn my mourning into dancing? After almost 12 months to the day I have had a full year of sorrow, missing, aloneness, self pity, self absorption, self recriminations, heartache, but also I have felt loved, comforted, supported, believed in, and an action packed, well traveled year, with 2 trips to Canada under my belt and a UK family holiday to Seaton, Devon as well.
I hope that my hubby would have been happy with what I have done and how far I have come, although at times it was a hard won battle when I lifted my head off the pillows in the morning and got up as some days depression was threatening and I could've kept my head under the duvet and said that 'people would think I had just popped to work or gone shopping' they wouldn't check on me till later? And just stayed and wallowed in my aloneness! But when you fight it and get up surprising things can happen.... You can start to live again........
I don't know what the future holds for me but for the first time in 12 months and maybe longer as my life was being a 24/7 carer and your life ends up being given over to the caree! You live through them and now I have to live thru myself.
So whatever God has planned for me I know I can lift my head up and say....... I can stand on my own two feet, I can feel, I can smell the roses/coffee, I can have new horizons, I can have hopes for a future..... Thank you hubby for being my mainstay and my friend I miss you dreadfully but you know I can do this.... Promise!
Love always Petal ###x your Boo ######x
Petal & Boo
