When tragedy strikes...

It’s been a while since I wrote on here. Life has been even more challenging than usual - and my usual isn’t exactly a walk in the park. I’ve barely had time to write, let alone process it all.

I had planned to write a post about my experience this year of finding support for my daughter as she recovered from autistic burnout, specifically the journey it has taken me on in understanding quite how complex and hidden her needs are. I had also planned to write about coaching our teens in making life decisions and the impact of the English education system on our children’s mental health. But life had other ideas.

Since my last post, when I wrote about my son’s travels around Eastern Europe, the following events (bar one) happened:

• my back went into spasm, laying me low for a 10 days

• my daughter moved back to her University town, settled into new lodgings and and re-started her final year of her Illustration degree

• I met with various professionals and authorities to put in place support for her studies and daily living

• we coached our son in making the difficult decision of whether to go to Uni this year or to take a much needed year out.

• I helped my son prepare to leave home as he made the decision to go with a week to go. Then helped him unpack those crates after he wisely made the (even more last minute decision) to NOT go this year.

• I submitted an application for PIP (a non-means tested disability benefit) for my daughter. After pushing back the deadline several times this summer, this was a hard and fast deadline.

• I supported my daughter as she dealt with the shock of being told by her new landlady that she needed to move out of her uni lodgings as her room was needed back….she’d been there only 3 weeks.

• we celebrated when my husband landed a job after 3 months unemployed! Overjoyed and exhausted, we booked a last minute, two night break at a country hotel in the Surrey Hills. It was bliss. Here’s a few photos:

After two years of countless challenges, it felt like quite a month. Two weeks ago, I had joked with a friend that she needn’t bother with subscribing to TV streaming services when she has all the drama of my life to watch. We laughed.

But then tragedy struck.

My twin brother called me 11 days ago to say his wife had suffered a major stroke, going on to suffer two more in 48 hours.

Needing two operations then put on life support for four excruciating days, none of us knew if she was going to make it or not. She is only 55.

To make it worse, she had to be moved from the large regional hospital in Cambridge to one that is 1hr 30 mins drive from their home for an emergency operation owing to her having another stroke at 3am when the relevant unit in Cambridge was shut….. I spent much of last week driving to the hospital in Essex to be with my brother and nieces, then driving them home at the end of the day and then back home myself. A round trip of about 3.5 hours in the car.

Thankfully her condition improved enough that she was able to be returned to her home hospital in a special ambulance. She has made tiny but encouraging steps of progress each day, gradually coming off sedation, and, just today, off the ventilator, much to our huge relief. This means she can be moved out of the Trauma unit, a brutal place with so many critically injured patients it was more akin to a war zone.

The whole thing is absolutely heartbreaking. I cannot begin to explain how shocking it is to see her in that condition.

My heart breaks not just for her but my twin brother, and my two nieces, aged 20 and 26.

It would be hard enough had my brother and I not already had the traumatic experience of visiting our parents in Intensive Care back in 1985. They lay there literally fighting for lives after my father suffered a brain haemorrhage and crashed the car whilst driving the whole family (except me) home from a wedding along the M40. My seventeen year old sister was killed instantly.

Echoes of the past have been reverberating around me and my twin brother all week. Sitting next to him whilst we looked on at his wife, lying as still, lifeless and tubed up as my father had been 40 years ago, brought us to a place that neither of us have dared talk about with each other since. We were, after all, only 14 at the time.

Writing about these events in my memoir over the past year has meant I am in touch with those emotions, and am seeing a therapist to help me along the way. So I felt able to face them, even to talk about some of those memories with him for the first time in four decades. It was, paradoxically, both a deeply painful, yet special, moment.

As the last 11 days have unfolded, I’ve encountered other echoes of that period, triggering deeply painful memories. It has been tough.

So, how am I coping?

For the first week, I coped by being the support I knew I could be for my dear brother. Refreshed after a few days away, I was fully able to be there for him. I’ve found I’m quite good in a crisis, finding a clarity and focus that’s needed in the moment. It was even more so last week.

In a strange way, I felt as if I’d been waiting for this moment all my life to help him.

I knew I needed to be with my nieces and my twin brother as soon as I could. I know how traumatic it is to see your mother so helpless, dependent on machines, and tubes and bleeping things simply to breathe. I know how distressing it is to not be able to recognise her because of the bloating effect of the drugs – and in my mother’s case, the disfiguring injuries.

I also know what it is like to not have any close relatives around to sit with me or give me a hug. I am his only sister, and their only aunt, and so no one else could fill that gap. I also know how incredibly thankful my Granny was to be driven every day to the hospital where my parents were that autumn in 1985 by a whole rota of friends, an 80 mile round trip.

Knowing my own need of support, I reached out to friends to let them know, for moral and spiritual support. I asked them, as my cousin said, to ‘storm heaven’ for my sister in law, brother, nieces and daughter, and for myself. I’m a big believer in the power of prayer. We all desperately need God’s grace, comfort and love, as we go through this ‘valley of the shadow of death’.

I’ve also leaned on the perspective that I’ve gained from my family’s tragedy: the extraordinary strength of the human spirit to survive, the surprising, and essential, kindness of strangers, and the power of prayer to sustain.

I feel we’re already seeing the effect of those prayers, and not just for my sister in law. My daughter messaged me yesterday to say she has found accommodation - and with the very person she’d hoped to lodge with months ago but who already had a lodger. For some reason, the lodger hasn’t returned! We are beyond delighted.

But as the days have worn on, and the initial emergency is over, I’m also taking care to look after myself. I’m taking the time to rest, sleep in, go for walks where possible. I’ve pressed pause on job hunting, created whatsapp chats for updates to ease the communication burden. Similarly, I’m liaising with my mother’s carers and brother’s PA to help support them as they process the news (the ripple effect of shock is wide). I’m leaning on my wonderful husband, and son who is, thankfully, available to dog sit or cook rather than being at University, struck down with fresher’s flu. Thank God for that decision!

I’ll be back here with an update when I feel able. But for now, I’m taking it one day at a time. To keep hoping, praying, and believing that good things will come out of bad.

It’s all we can do.

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