The Storms Of Life

A Self Portrait With My Mum

The last few weeks have been extremely turbulent emotionally, which is why I've stalled writing anything on here.

About three weeks ago, I got news from my mum saying that her uncle, my great-uncle, was sick and had been admitted to hospital. Growing up, I had no contact with my mother's father, so my great-aunt and -uncle stepped into the role of grandparents to Hannah, Caleb and me when I was roughly five years old. So when my mum told me that my grandad was in hospital I was  very concerned, and prayed for the best. No one knew what to expect, but we all hoped he would pull through. Mum booked her ticket to the UK almost as soon as she heard that grandad was sick.

I had impact training in Spain week after I'd heard from mum about grandad's deteriorating health, so I couldn't travel over to England to be with her and the rest of the family. I flew into Valencia the day before the rest of the impact training team (this was due to not being able to find cheap tickets that matched up with the rest of the group and also meant I was flying out the day after they left). On the Monday morning, I was in an AirBnB, and woke up to the message from my mum, saying that grandad had passed away. I went into shock and tried to push the truth away. I didn't really want to process this. When the team arrived, I told them what had happened. It took me until Wednesday before the truth began to sink in and the tears began to flow.

King's Day 2017

That week in Valencia was quite a rough week in general, and beyond the news of my grandad. There was several things that came up. Throughout that entire week, Andy was an incredible help with the processing of all that was happening. Outside the teachings we did some exploring together in our free time and also spent a lot of time talking about various things. One of the things we'd planned to do when Andy had come to visit me here in the Netherlands was wearing t-shirts to commemorate the Dutch Koningsdag (King's Day) on April 27, 2017. We both wore the t-shirts which caused quite a bit of laughter when people noticed the shirts, it was also in part to a play on Andy's surname.

When I got back from Spain, my mum came to visit on Monday. She'd flown to England to spend time with the family after the death of my grandad and had come over to The Netherlands for a few days, so I collected her from the Stena Line terminal. We then spent the day together in The Hague. It was great being able to see her and spend some time with her. We haven't seen each other since August 2016 when I went to South Africa for two weeks. I'm not sure when I'll see her again (probably not before the end of the year). My dad's still in South Africa, and will be traveling to Uganda soon with my mum. Because my mum won't be in England for my grandad's funeral, it means that I will presenting the immediate family at the funeral. I was going to be in the UK the weekend before anyway, so got a few days off and thus moved my return ticket so that I can go to the funeral.