Back home from The Lizard. June 2012

Hi Matt,

 Here I am back home once more. We enjoyed our week in Mullion with your brother and his family, going to various places and the old familiar ones.  And we talked about you, and how you are so missed......forever...... a hole, a gaping hole, in our family which you used to occupy.
And somehow, that underground grief which flows ever on welled up at the beginning of the holiday, when we heard the awful news of the sudden death of someone else we knew very well.

Mullion Cove. Cornwall. June 2012

Our friend had expressed her wish that we should not be told until we got home, and was upset that we had heard the way we did  but somehow someone else "thought we should know". So I received the news at the beginning of our first family holiday with our grandson, by a text, which although not stating what had happened, made my blood run cold, and eventually after several frantic phone calls we were given the truth.

I would say that it is not really the best way to learn devastating news.      

For me it meant it had a double effect. The shock making me feel helpless and sick, and then the thought of all that the newly bereaved family, in the loss of their husband and dad at a relatively early age, were going to have to face. It affected my son, and so his wife. Seeing the immediate effects.

It reverberated round my emotions for days, not being able to sleep very well, and constantly having flashbacks to the night we had our own phone call in the early hours of the morning. It made  the last 6 years melt away until it was as if I was living through it all over again.

Porthleven harbour

St Ives beach. 

We have visited the family today, having returned home yesterday, and the sheer rawness of the grief and shock is self evident. Nothing ever, ever, prepares you for the sudden death of a loved one, so alive one minute, and then.......................a call...................  

So, Matthew, we had our week, and as we knew there was nothing we could do at that point, I found great solace in the daily routine which began with our grandson having his breakfast, sitting in his high chair and beaming when he saw us first thing in the morning. He is a very smiley baby, now 8 months old, and he brings us much joy. I wish you could see him.

The path to Lizard Point

You would recognise the now familiar path which winds it's way down to the Most Southerly Point in the British Isles. This time of the year there is the yellow of the wild field mustard, mingling with the other flowers by the wayside.  And we went to sit on your rock, and I picked some sea pinks, or thrift as it is known and dropped in the small flower heads one by one, as we remembered you.
We already chose a house in which to stay next year! All of us once more. By that time your nephew will be almost two years old and walking.
So we left your rock once more and walked back along the cliffs to the sound of the waves and the sight of the shifting, ever changing sea.
In my heart Matt.............love you. Mumxx      

Mesembryanthemums growing wild on the cliffs at Lizard Point.