Achieving a long term personal goal is terrific isn’t it? I have been looking forward to my fiftieth blood donation and last week I did it. It made me smile inside and out.
Smiling is the focus of this week’s blog written by my daughter Grace. It’s not the first time she’s written for the blog. Here are her words now.
Happy belated Father’s Day to the daddy’s out there! Father’s Day should probably have been a difficult day for me; it wasn’t though because daddy always scoffed at Father’s Day, he said it was just another made up holiday for the card companies to make money; this was very typical of his general attitude to life, and something that I treasure.
This past week has been somewhat of a transformative one. On Monday morning I was taken aside at work and told that unfortunately they don’t have vacancies for full time staff and that they would keep me on for another month as an intern while I look for something else. They also offered to give me glowing references and put me in touch with some recruiters.
This caused me to reevaluate my current situation and question where I want to be and what I want to do next. If Daddy was still alive I know he would be a measured voice of reason affirming that I was making the correct choices as to what I should do next. He was always really good with the career and life path guidance stuff. A reassuring voice when I was finding new pathways challenging and assuring me that I was capable of working things out. In fact the last time I spoke with Daddy on Skype, a week or so before he died, I was talking about how I was finding work an exhaustingly steep learning curve, he finished the conversation by telling me to “keep smiling,” this was a mantra I know he was trying to abide by in his struggle with MSA, and now I try to make it mine.
So with the idea of keeping smiling in mind I have been thinking about what to do now my time at Brunswick is coming to a close. I have come to the conclusion that what matters is to do something that makes me happy and with that in mind I am considering a move back to Leeds for a little while. My visa in the states is coming to an end and I have missed my friends and family massively while in the U.S. I have also come to realise that I miss the countryside and the ability of the rural landscape to lift my soul. The skyscrapers of NYC just don’t do that for me. Reid has also agreed to try out Britain again, he misses British pubs and fish and chips; it has nothing to do with me!
I thought I would be coming back to the UK to support mummy with my dad’s decline, but in the end that isn’t going to be the case. It will be hard to go back to The Old Chapel for the second time without Daddy being there, although the first time when I went back for the funeral I felt his presence in the house which was lovely. It will be difficult because it has been easier to accept his passing living in NYC as he was never here with me to start with. There will always be things that are difficult in the months and years ahead, but in the past two and a half months I have come to focus on the positives and have enjoyed telling stories about daddy to others, although some people are still awkward about me talking about my deceased father. Things have got less painful, it isn’t just a cliché.
Grace and Reid smiling , Christmas 2011
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