Life is always moving forward, changing in some way, sometimes we don’t even notice those small subtle changes, however the bigger changes can really hit home and leave you feeling a little empty or leaving you on a high depending on the change.
Since January nothing in my life has felt stable, seeing my granddaughter suffer so much has had a massive impact on the whole family. Simple things, such as the fact we can no longer plan family days out because Paige simply cannot come, meaning someone has to be home with her and then the bigger things like family holidays are now a challenge. Truthfully we are so lucky that she is still here with us, we are just having to look at life in a different way and now she is smiling again and having little jokes with us we feel she is starting to at least have some quality of life again.
During the summer months other things have been going on which have added to our varied lives. Owen my eldest grandson who has Autism started his new special school Oak Lodge in Hampshire. We had been so worried for him, it is an hours taxi drive there every morning and then the return every evening but he is coming home very happy and my daughter now feels it was worth the terrible fight she had to get him in there, she was right when she said it was the only school she felt confident in.
I have had to test drive a couple of WAV vehicles for Paige they are wheelchair adapted vehicles, which means she will in future travel in her wheelchair and not sit on a car seat. We have at the moment a large nine seat vehicle via the motability scheme but we are dropping down in size as Jo would have to raise about £5,000 down payment to get the large vehicle again and that is such a lot of money for a vehicle you never own. As it is she still has to pay £1,300 for the small one which she will have for 5 years but this also means only one or two of her sisters and brother can travel with her, we know she will miss them, but she needs this type of car.
Another shock came when we got a call to say John’s Mum had been rushed to hospital with heart problems, she has always been so strong and just gets on with life, hopefully though it seems that things are now under control and she is out of danger.It was very hard for us the fact we are three hundred miles away from her and we have jobs we just cannot walk away from, we wanted to be there for her but hed to make do with lots of phone calls.
A different shock for me was when I got the message that my tennis coach was leaving, my Tuesday nights playing tennis has for a while been my only turn off point, I would go there and leave everything behind me. Our coach was the type of person that really made you believe in yourself, his passion for the sport passed along to us and we all got so much from his lesson. In truth we all knew he would not be staying around for long we had been with him for two years but it was not hard to see he was a man fired with ambition and devoted to his sport, Salisbury could not offer him enough. He is now National head coach for Cyprus and I expect in the future to read about his coaching the stars of tomorrow. I am still playing tennis but I would be lying to say it is the same, it is not and I think it will be a long time before I find a coach like him again.
It now feels like Autumn is heading towards us, my brother is coming to stay for the weekend and I am hoping to try to find some balance over the next few months and find some inner peace, it has so far been a strange year, not a really bad year but a very different one and it is not finished yet! I am looking to the future with a positive outlook as I have the most amazing family and friends around me.
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