Month: July 2009

After the monumentally bad, comes the reasonably good

I’m still feeling like a complete train wreck. Disbelief seems to be the dominant emotion, followed by rage, nausea, desperation, and then fear. Because if this can happen to Anna and Rob, the nicest of people and the best of parents, it could happen to me. Or you.

It probably won’t. It probably won’t. And probably is about as good as we’re ever going to get. And though that isn’t nearly good enough, that is all we can hope for. Acceptance, and hope. Hope that it won’t happen to us, and hope that someday Anna and Rob will have joy in their lives again.

So I am taking this opportunity to share some joy.

Five minutes after “that” phone call last night, there was another phone call, from Christine, Mark’s sister, Ella’s mum. Ella is going to have a brother or sister later in the year, and that news couldn’t have been more welcome, or more badly received – due to it coming so hot on the heels of such devastating news. We are absolutely thrilled that Inigo is going to have another cousin. Ella and he are exactly the same age, so this is as close as he will get to a little brother or sister. Unless something radical happens!

Secondly, our family has been tossing around the idea of a holiday, mum and dad, Adam and Sarah, Mark and I, and Alex and Inigo, all in some tropical island setting, with beaches and daiquiris and pool boys relaxation. Yesterday, that became a concrete reality. Mum has booked flights to Bali, and we have 2 weeks here. More info here. It looks too good to be true. Throw in a driver and a childcare worker on top of the staff of seven, and I think I’ll be pretty happy.

And the other news? News so great that on any other day I’d be jumping up and down and shouting from the rooftops? Inigo is cured. No more reflux. No more antibiotics, no more tests, no more month visits to the expensive paediatrician. We have to see her once more when he turns two, and then probably never again.

Cured.

I’m off to drink myself into a stupor. Goodnight.

Dear Internets…

I don’t believe in prayers, but if you do, please pray. If you don’t believe in prayers, please send vibes, healing energy, good wishes, light, whatever it is you do believe in.

My darling friend Anna and her husband Rob put their little girl Lara to bed on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday morning she was dead.

I am still in shock as I write these words, and I know that nothing but time will make Anna and Rob breathe again. I also know that the next days weeks, months and years will be unbearably painful for them, but that they must go on for the sake of their other gorgeous daughter.

We celebrated Lara’s 3rd birthday on the third of May this year.