Lost At Sea

I have written and re-written this update in my head a million times, but words don’t come as easily these days.

When Mum was handed her death sentence, a stark, black and white image of a disease that grew silently and sneakily behind our backs, she accepted it with so much grace and humility. She had known more love in her short life, she said, than most would ever experience. She had no regrets, no resentments, no yearnings. She was complete in the knowledge that she was surrounded by love.

But me? I didn’t accept it at all.

I was a new mother, who desperately needed her mother. A woman who relied on her Mum to help her fix problems. A daughter who had to remind herself her Mum was busy and probably didn’t want a phone call every single day. But mostly, a little girl, reaching out her arms in the dark and begging her Mum to never die.

She would have done anything for me, but she couldn’t do that.

So instead of turning to her, as I always would have done, I turned to the internet. The next best thing.

‘How to cope with losing your Mum’, ‘Can’t cope with Mum dying’, ‘Do you ever get over your Mum dying?’, ‘Life without my Mum’.

I scoured forum after forum after forum, heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak. I don’t remember now what most people said. It was an endless stream of untethered souls who had just lost the one person that grounded them to this Earth. And I was flung among them, equally as clueless and equally as afraid.

But amidst the chaos, one post has stuck with me, and maybe it will help others, or maybe it will help explain where we are now.

This gentleman described the death of someone we love as a shipwreck. When that breaking wave hits and you’re flung from your safe haven you feel as though you’re drowning. The storm rages around you and you’re hit by wave after wave. Each one as tall as a building, dragging you under.

The waves are relentless. As soon as you come up for air, gasping and spluttering, another hits. You have no idea how you will survive, but each time you miraculously do.

After a while, it could be weeks, or months, or years, you realise the waves are coming a little less frequently. They still hit you with an indescribable force. They still drag you under. But you keep rising to the surface.

Eventually, they hit even less, and they aren’t as tall as they once were. Perhaps they only hit when some debris floats past – a photo, the evening primroses blooming, a jar of knitted liquorice all sorts. You realise that in between the waves you are living life again.

And you begin to realise that the waves will keep coming forever, but that sometimes they won’t break over your head. Sometimes they’ll carry you forward and you may even enjoy the ride. Sometimes those bits of debris will make you smile.

Eventually, a long time from now, you’ll wash up on shore somewhere and start truly living again. You’ll choose to swim in those waves, because they remind you of the wonderful person you loved and lost. Life will never look the same. But it will go on, and it will be ok again.

Right now I can’t see that day coming. Right now, the storm is raging and I can’t remember blue skies. But I will get there, because my Mum would be devastated if I didn’t. After everything she did for me, I owe her that.

Emotionally, I am battling the waves, I am gasping for air, and I am kicking to stay afloat.

But physically, we are back in the UK, miles from our home and the dream life we had created for ourselves. We want to be close to family, to support and be supported, until the shock has subsided. I thought the boat and our lives on the water would pale into insignificance with everything going on, but the opposite has been true.

We’ve found it hard to adjust to this new way of life, a life we tried hard to move away from. Working 9-5, barely seeing each other, struggling to save any money for future adventures, and missing the sun and wind and ocean.

We have a rough plan to head back to the boat in the Spring and start again. A new boat, a new family, a new adventure. We can’t wait to go back to doing what we love most and showing this life to Jack, who is the light in this storm.

We have some work to do in the meantime. As you know, we left in a hurry and the boat needs preparing for yet another winter on the hard standing. We STILL don’t have engines. And we have a lot of work to do.

But time brings perspective and we feel excited to get stuck in again, rather than daunted by the massive task ahead. We’ll be here in the UK for the winter. Jack is in nursery a few days a week so that I can bring the website back to life and regenerate some income for when we move aboard. But after that we need to emerge from our hiding place, we need to feel the sun on our faces again.

Hopefully you’ll see more from us, more photos, more updates, more little adventures in the UK, more positivity! And more blog posts, which I promise I will share. Slowly we’ll get back to being us, and I’m so grateful to know we’ll have your support along the way.

If we can survive this, the biggest hurricane we’ve faced, then I know we can weather any storm.

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