I'm aware more than most just how fragile the future is.
We all make plans that don't come to fruition and we all have dreams that we know will never happen for a variety of reasons.
It's been a year since Stephanie died. She was such a part of my future. She was my future.
As our adult children left home, including Stephanie and we became expats and our last two children leaving home, we didn't really know what the future would hold for us. We had plans, we had dreams, we had expectations.
Peter would retire, we'd move back to the UK, I'd resume my career. We'd travel. My father died suddenly without warning and life stood still in 2017 for 6 months. I'd just finished a job and was embarking on a new career due to start the following month. I never got back into a routine, I didn't get a life back for me. I just drifted for the next few years, just waiting to restart.
Grandchildren filled my time as I travelled between Dubai and the UK, relocating back here permanently in March 2020 in covid to be here for Stephanie, unsure of what the future would be again for the next 18 months.
We brought Peter's retirement forward, had an extension built and a new kitchen, I started working and it felt like for the first time in ages we had settled down, things were sorted. The kids were all settled and happy, we had been travelling, had travel booked, were spending time with our grandchildren. The house was sorted, we'd sold the flat and were rid of the stress of being landlords of living abroad. We bought a campervan. We started planning our new future.
We had a year with a grandchild needing surgery in and out of hospital and he still has moments here he is unwell, but no further surgery needed. Our lovely Bob the dog died aged 13 which upset us far more than we ever anticipated. Yes, we had some stress in our lives and we anticipated things would go wrong and there would be problems, but we knew we'd just have to cope with things and that together we'd be able to do this.
Day, to day, week to week, month by month and yearly plans and dreams were being put into place. The future was quiet, it was peaceful, it was what we had envisioned.
We didn't have everything planned for our future, we also acknowledged that things wouldn't always go to plan. We might have to move before we're ready to, ill health or disability. We might have to sell the van and give up our camping trips earlier than planned.
There is however a natural order to things. The future was me in my 80's after Peter died (he's 14 years older than me) in a coffee shop with Stephanie having lunch. My granddaughter with her children having collected me and driven me there for our monthly meet up.
I'd even told my 6 year old granddaughter I'd buy her a car when she was bigger so she could drive me to see Aunty Stephanie when she was a big girl.
What ever we had planned, however far ahead we had booked in our diary, the future was always me in the coffee shop with Stephanie.
That coffee shop will always be in my future and so will my granddaughter, whether it'll be in my old age, whether she will have children herself is to be seen, but as long as we can get to the coffee shop or at least get to each other, we can still have that future and I can make sure that Stephanie lives on in our family through our granddaughters memories of the brief time she got to spend with her.
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