Sorrow

Where does one start. November was a month of utter sorrow, sadness and disbelief. We experienced the loss of Mark’s parents, within twelve days of each other and Mark spent most of November in Ireland, both at home, at the hospital in Sligo and at the Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

Vera and I flew over twice to attend two very sad, but beautiful funerals. It has been really hard to come to terms with it and there has been a lot of tears.

The only silver lining on this very black cloud has been family. Mark has a wonderful, caring and loving family and this has certainly brought all of us together.

Bereavement also allows you, or forces you to re-assess what is important in life. During the week after Mark’s dad’s funeral and when Mark’s mum was seriously ill, I had the worst week at work in my whole working life. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to leave and go somewhere else, but this truly was the nail in the coffin. Luckily I had already started to pursue some new opportunities and had a few interviews and I was lucky to be offered two jobs. I have now accepted a role as a Sales Operations Manager, starting 5th January. Here's to a more successful and happier 2015

 

Vera is great and her language is coming on leaps and bounds. She is very affectionate these days, tells us she loves us at least five times every day and wants lots of hugs. I am enjoying this for as long as it lasts.

She has been absolutely brilliant with all the recent travelling and constant change of scenery.

She was  so good and mature in the airport, with all the queuing, security checks, car rentals etc. I was very proud of her.

I'm just back this evening from a parent's evening with her key worker Tracey. Everything was absolutely fine. She is very sociable, loves arts and crafts and helping out. She has a good group of friends and talks a lot about home life, her cousins in Sweden and her cousins in Ireland.

 

Christmas is coming faster than we know it. When we came back from Ireland we went straight into Christmas mode, bought and decorated our Christmas tree, decorated the tree and I've gone all out with Swedish Christmas baking. We're very much looking forward to our Christmas in Ireland, which will be full of family, memories as well as sadness for two dearly loved people who are not going to be there.

On a different note, I am thinking of password protecting this blog, so for those of you out there who may read from time to time, and would like to continue reading my ramblings, drop me a line!