Home time

We’ve just spent our first weekend at home together as a family in months. As I wrote last week, my husband Roger has been a patient at our local hospice and we had wondered whether he would be well enough to come home at all. But as his condition improved a little, we were given the chance to spend some quality time together,  to try to recreate a little holiday at home for a few precious days.

When you don’t know how long you have left, it’s important to make every minute count, and for us to be able to relax together at home was so special. Before he came back, we worried how he’d cope doing normal has like walking around the house, going upstairs to bed, even sitting in the car on the journey home seemed a challenge.   So to see him here, managing to do these things relatively easily and with a big smile on his face, was like a dream come true. 

The anticipation of three days at home was like preparing a military operation. The idea of us all being together was blissful, but at the same time I knew if we weren’t able to go out the risk of both children and adults becoming fractious was high! 

I’d stocked the fridge with all our favourite foods, bought a few new toys and books for the kids, and made sure I had friends on standby in case emergency childcare was needed. Luckily it wasn’t, and Rog seemed to be doing so well I even braved two small trips out with the kids to the park, the beach and the ice cream van. After all, what situation isn’t made better with ice cream? 

Sam and Florence were so excited to see their dad, it was so comforting to see them eager to hug him and make him feel special. Until that is, perhaps the third day when cabin fever was setting in for them, and a bit of the usual “well if you take Netflix off your iPad then I’ll hate you” came back into play! As we said, we did want a normal bank holiday and not many normal bank holidays come without a little bit of grumpiness, do they?

It’s amazing how much better I feel though just to have been all together in our own environment. This life may not be turning out how we planned, but we’re trying to appreciate what we have before it’s too late. I’m trying to focus on the elation that we’ve managed to make this slice of normality happen, rather than the deep sadness that it will soon be gone. 

My hope now is for many more weekends like this one, maybe even a weekend away, or a night (or even day) in our pet project that was, our wreck of a caravan! More on how that’s coming along very soon…

X Julia 

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