Rain and shine

Very excited. I'm contributing to an article about women's experience of miscarriage. Not a magazine but a broadsheet this time. More details when I know them!

Real up and down day today. The weather was very strange - pouring rain one minute and bright sunshine the next. Very apt. I seemed to go from lovely moments - picnicing in Greenwich Park with the children, Rosie laughing at my impression of a cow, Toby and Rosie giggling together - to feeling like my head might explode - Rosie crying and crying (think she's teething or her cold is really bothering her), trying to wipe Toby's bottom while he ran around the bathroom pretending to be Sportacus with Rosie screaming in the background. Definitely ups and downs.

I found out last night that my grandmother is even worse. She's in the hospital with a virus and can't keep any food down. I've tried to ring Mom and Dad a few times but they're never there. Always at the hospital. Mom left a message today saying Grandma seemed to be getting better but her dementia is really bad. She's making no sense at all. Mom sounded so tired. I'm sure she's at the hospital all day.

I talked to J last night about what we'll do when Grandma dies. I would really like to go to the funeral. I'd like to be there for Mom and I think it'll probably be the last time that the extended family get together. Mom has three brothers and a sister. Growing up there were twelve of us cousins and I loved every single one of my cousins so much. My aunts, uncles and cousins were a huge part of my childhood and it makes me very sad to think that Grandma's funeral could be the last time that I see some of them.

Sitting here now I can think of so many fond memories. Uncle Ronnie telling us the Headless Horseman story then Uncle Wayne jumping out with a coat over his head, scaring us all half to death... using a vine to swing across the creek behind Tessha's house one summer and David swinging right into a tree... Ian pretending to flush Tessha's cat down the toilet... two summers in New Orleans with Uncle Ronnie, Aunt Linda and Stacey, watching this new thing called MTV, making our own band specialising in Sylvia's song 'Nobody' and eating snowballs until I felt sick... riding horses with David and reading Daryl's Archie comic books... the time Daryl wrote a play that we performed for our parents that ended with Tammy saying the line "It's bat guano pie.'... wearing my hair with a braid on one side for years because I saw Melanie wear her hair like that once... dancing around the room to the Beatles and the Bee Gees with Tessha, James (who was Tootie back then) and baby Terry Wayne... crying my eyes out whenever we all had to say good bye.

Lot of good memories.