Why, what and how come

Picture from Pinterest.

So, perhaps maybe you have noticed that I’ve been away. Probably not, but someone might have.

Well, I haven’t been away, but I have been struggling ever since early morning Sunday 17th of January, when my dad called and said “I believe your mother has passed away, the paramedics are here.” Of course the conversation wasn’t in English but anyway… He sounded totally strange in that call, I remember. “Are you sure? No, that can’t be, I’m sure they will fix her.” I think I said, but it’s all a bit blur. “No, I don’t think they will, I’m sorry but she’s gone,” my dad said and we ended the call because he needed to talk with the people (paramedics, doctors, police, I guess even the firefighters because the emergency dispatch sends anyone who is near) there. I hanged on to the hope that they would get her heart beating again, you know like in the movies, where someone yells “CLEAR!” and then they jolt the person with electricity and they wake up. Yeah, apparently all the other things – except the waking up part happened. A few minutes later my dad called me again, and just repeated. “I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”

So, I called my brother who had just traveled on a working trip to the other side of the world. He was in the cab on his way to the hotel from the airport when I reached him and blurted out “You need to call dad. Mom died.”  I did apologize later on for not softening the blow, but at the time I barely managed that.

We had no real warning signs, okay, she had a bit of a flu and was coughing the last week, but nothing _serious_ that would’ve led us to believe she’s about to die. On Christmas she was doing her thing like all other years before. And then less than a month later she’s gone.

Basically her last words were (just a few minutes before she died) “Let’s go back to bed and lie down for a while, it was so warm and comfy, we’re not in a hurry anywhere.” Dad tucked her in and said he’d come to bed too in a bit. He sat in the room adjoining to their bedroom when he heard a strange sound, jumped up and by the time he got to her he couldn’t get any reaction from her at all, when he tried to wake her up. She wasn’t breathing anymore. He called 112 (our 911) and started with CPR. The ambulance arrived quickly, as did all the others, but there was nothing they could do.

So what a start to the new year, eh?

I notified my boss about what happened and then stayed with dad for a few days until my brother managed to fly back (18 hour trip one way, so that doesn’t happen just like that) and come stay with him. After that it has been a bit blurry. February went by, we had the funeral and all the legal stuff what needed to be done. March, April and May just flew by…

Work has been busy, in a good way but since my brain has been a bit off due to all of the stress of this spring, I’m now cleaning up the messes (not big ones, but I hate fixing my own mistakes) I’ve made working on overdrive when I should’ve taken a step back and said – I can’t do it.

Outside work, I’ve been arranging a two-day football (soccer) tournament, that is a week away, or actually less than a week away, because this time next week it’s over and done with. Yeah, I do question my own sanity volunteering for these things. Needless to say, had I known that I would lose my mother, I wouldn’t have volunteered. Why didn’t I back out of it, I don’t know.

So besides work, kids, tournament arrangements, I have taken on worrying about dad, checking up on him, first few weeks (months?) I made sure he always had ready food in the freezer that he could just heat and eat. After all, they were an old school couple, married for more than 50 years and mom always did the cooking and washing – so he has had to learn how to fend for himself. But he’s doing okay, considering he lost the love of is life.

So there you have it, my excuse for being AWOL, for leaving my stories hanging, for ignoring my blog.

I hope to get back to writing, but before that I need to find myself again, and I just don’t have the time or the energy to do soul-searching.

2014 – Loading…

So, less than 2 hours left of 2013. I think it’s just appropriate that I should look back and think about everything that has happened, in my life that is, and not the world.

I’m not one to over analyse stuff so I’ll wrap it up quickly.  I can divide the year into two parts. There’s the BFF (that’s Before FanFiction and not Best Friends Forever) – and the AFF (do I really have to spell it out?).

BFF a.k.a the first half of the year my life consisted on work and football (soccer to be specific). No I don’t play, but my kid does. Besides those two things there was reading. Not many memories, flipping through the images on my phone gets boring quickly. Football field after football field ad nauseam. 

But then I had the “maybe I should write” epiphany and life took a new direction. First I started writing, the day before the summer vacation started, I published the first chapter to Sunsets. Suddenly people started reading my stuff and liking it. WTF? Here I was under the impression that I can’t write – after all, that’s the way my teachers portrayed it ~ 20 years ago. Holy crap, has it really been that long? 

I’ve found out that I thoroughly enjoy writing – when I have the time to sit down and write. The five minutes here and ten there, not so much. I find it refreshing to take a blank page,  or a new word document and start typing away. This from a person who hasn’t even kept a diary, can you believe it?

Through Fanfiction, I found a bunch of wonderfully nutty people, and suddenly I start feeling like myself again! I hadn’t even noticed that I had lost myself in the whole grownup/ motherhood thing. When thinking back, the last 7 years it’s like I’ve been on autopilot or something. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m just really happy to have found myself again! And some people around the globe that I call my friends, you know who you are. Thank you!

Thank you 2013. It’s been a ride, let’s see what 2014 has to offer. 

Day two in blogosphere – what the hell am I supposed to write about?

So, I got the blog up. Now there’s the actual part of blogging, which obviously does not come naturally for me. Luckily I saw this inspirational quote that I thought I’d share with you.

Don’t give up. That is way much easier said than done. I could tell you a thousand – well probably not that many, but still a lot – of things that I’ve given up on in my life. It’s the not giving up that seems to be the hard part.

You know the new year is approaching (49 hours left as I’m typing this) and although I usually make it my new years resolution to not make new years resolutions, I can’t help but think what I’ll do differently in 2014.

Maybe I’ll try with the not giving up. It could work in a lot of things. For example: if I would be persistent with trying to lose weight – in stead of giving up after a week or two I might succeed. Right?

I’m proud of myself as I’ve already succeeded in not giving up when my muse totally deserted me about a month back. I can tell you that it really is a bitch to sit down with the intention to write and then the words just don’t come. I thought about quitting my story totally, but realized that that’s not the solution. Quitting would bug me much more than the fact that my updates went from twice per week to once per week. After starting to write the Xmas story as spur of the moment kind of thing – you can find the story in the menu on the top of this page btw – the muse for Sunsets returned as well.

So as my new years resolution – even though I just said I wasn’t going to make any – I’m deciding to not give up on myself. I’m going to try to do something I had never ever imagined doing. I’ll tell you about it when I get my gameplan ready.