Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 72 Comments

Sneaky Grief

Grief sneaks up on you. It often doesn’t attack head on – when you can brace yourself for impact. The big hits are the attacks from behind – the ones you don’t see coming. That song on the radio, an unexpected find, a hidden photograph, a surprise film scene.

In the U.K. Mothers Day is fast approaching. It’s not an easy day to get through but it’s no surprise. You have weeks to prepare. It won’t be fun but I guess it won’t be a complete meltdown. I suspect I will blog further on this again.

Taking the dog for a walk in the local Arboretum. It’s a lovely relaxing place. I was using the walk to get my head round a work problem. The mad dog was happy – a dog and an Arboretum full of thousands of trees …. Pup Heaven.

So I was in autopilot. Just following Captain Chaos from tree to tree. Starting to form a viable fix to the work problem. Then I stopped dead in my tracks. A sudden realisation of location. A sudden sinking heart. Suddenly hit by a sneaky grief attack.

In autopilot mode I had drifted into one particularly beautiful area. During autumn a place glowing with silver leaves. A place my partner would repeatedly visit. I can see her face smiling at the view. A place where she wants part of her ashes scattered. A flood of tears and complete despair. I feel very old and so very alone.

But thankfully for my sanity I have designated role. Our Son needs me. He deserves the best childhood possible. So I let the dog pull me away from the area to a particularly exciting unmarked giant Tree.

Put away the tissue. Breathe. Refocus. That wave of grief has passed but I know that the tide will return.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 63 Comments

Those pesky Vikings

Living with anxiety is the real deal for so many people and kids.

“DAD, DAD I am getting really anxious, sorry its the middle of the night”

Anxiety seems inexplicably linked with Autism. We are so used to these panic attacks. They can happen at any stage.

“This one is a daft one. A really daft one. But I am panicking”

Son there are no daft ones. Whatever the cause – panic attacks are awful. We call it the anxiety vortex. When they take hold they just keep gaining strength – making rational thought almost impossible.

“It sillier than the school history one”

At school the teacher was talking about the Middle Ages. The Black Death came up. The whole thing unsettled our son. Given what he has been through Death haunts his soul. When he did some research he found that the cause is still not agreed upon but it could be bubonic plague. Bubonic plague still kills today. The anxiety vortex took hold. It took a couple of days of hard work to bring it under control. We are still trying to extinguish that one…

“Dad when I went to the York Dungeons. Well it was fun and kinda scary. Well one room scared me. It was the vikings. The models looked awful as if they had the plague, the room smelled of death. All I can think about is Ghost Vikings. Ghost Vikings coming to get us. I know it sounds daft but it’s starting to unleash a lot of other vortexes.”

So during the night we talked about Ghost Vikings. We talked about a lot of things. Stuff like that today football is super popular in Scandinavia – if Viking ghosts did come back they are more likely to want to play football than go on a violent pillage. Stuff like given the astronomical price of Alcohol in Norway the ghosts would just be heading straight for our pubs and our village doesn’t have a bar….

This one was a relatively easy vortex to tame. Yes we could easily debunk it. But Anxiety and fears are so very real. Many cannot be tamed. Many more are still to be unearthed. If you are suffering I send you my love. It is so so tough.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 69 Comments

Trees

What a stunning tree.

We took Captain Chaos for a walk this morning. Still trying to process yesterday’s school review meeting. Maybe it’s because I am tired but I just can’t get my head fully round it’s implications. It’s times like this when being a single parent sucks… No one to talk things through with. No voice of reason. So the ideas and words just keep swirling around.

I turned up carrying my 300 pages of notes (sorry Trees…). When I opened the paper pile a must do House DIY list dropped out. Sadly nothing can be ticked off the list from the last meeting. Where does all the time go.

The meeting lasted two hours. So many discussions. So many disagreements. So much frustration.

I suspect the best way to summarise is to see a never ending circle.

I ask for something. School confirm it’s not happened. Health Service says the need is real and should be met. School says they don’t have the resources to do this. School asks the Council for funds. Council says it’s not an education issue, it’s a health issue. Health Service says they don’t have the money and it’s an education issue. And on and on. If we give money to health to provide additional support then that has to come from the school and they then can’t even meet his minimum care standards. So Son has real unmet needs – everyone agrees on that but no one is prepared to provide the funds. Everybody at the meeting clearly cared about our son. Let’s be honest Health and Education have been hammered by our current Government. You can only cut things so far before things start falling apart.

Let’s quote our Prime Minister again

“I’m on your side….”

Just sod off. You are not on OUR SIDE. You are just looking after yourself. You don’t give a damm about kids like our son. Get back to looking at your, your husband and your friends off shore investments….

So the bottom line is Health are going to write to the Council and request additional funding. Council are going to write to the Health Managers and ask for additional funds. While our PM sits in Chequers and tries to find more desperate ways of staying in power. Go on May why don’t you bribe the DUP with billions of pounds of public funds again – while lecturing the rest of us that ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’. Madness.

More positively school are going to try some minor adjustments to see if that helps our son. They are also going to formally request exceptional one-off funding to pay for an in-depth dyslexia assessment. The funding probably won’t come but at least school now recognise the impact dyslexia is having on our son’s educational performance.

So hopefully at the next meeting we will have seen some progress and at the very least confirming that

  • Son has started getting some more tailored support,
  • I have started doing some of the DIY projects which are badly needed,
  • I will have gone paperless so more beautiful trees will be saved AND
  • our incompetent and distinctly unpleasant PM is consigned to historical ignominy…..
Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 64 Comments

Martians just made the list…

Sometimes you just have to get up close to flowers. Neighbours must think I am stark raving mad….

Sometimes you have those days. Days were you get up close to flowers and also end up pulling out what’s left of your hair.

School has been verbally told (many times) and been provided with extensive case notes for our son. Just in case school didn’t fancy reading War and Peace I helpfully provided a two page bullet point summary. Bullet Point 6 said

Can have poor judgement in relation to risk.

Bullet Point 7 adds

Has a diagnosis of Dyspraxia. Has very poor fine motor skills. Struggles to use pens. One to one Care and supervision needed when using sharp objects.

Under the section relating to specific school subjects

Design & Technology. One to one supervision required when using cutting tools, drilling tools and impact tools.

Additionally school has been given a verbal and written update on his current broken hand. Although the bone has heeled he is undertaking physio to try and get his hand working properly again. So he in effect still just using his weaker left hand.

Today was his first Design and Technology lesson. So it was also a fingers crossed type day. Funnily enough it was also a plaster type day……

He came back home. His thumb and two fingers covered in large plasters.

“Dad I had a bit of an accident. I was trying to saw using my left hand. The teacher shouted out an instruction to the class. I got distracted and I started sawing my hand rather than the wood…”

Apparently he wasn’t given any one on one supervision. He was allowed to use a normal saw with his wrong hand, with no additional safety measures in place. – Maybe I’m just being an over protective parent. It’s a natural thing to do.

“Dad funny thing is the lesson was about safety in the workplace. Guess I’ve already failed…”

So that’s something else we will be discussing at his school review meeting on Friday. Could be a long meeting because it’s one sizeable issues list….

But let’s try to finish on a brighter note. We sat on the grass next to the daffodil patch with ice lollies in hand.

“Dad up close Daffodils take on a completely different perspective. If your a bug looking up at those yellow giants, it must be terrifying. Do you think HG Wells got his idea for the mechanical Martians from Daffodils”

As I pondered that the mad dog ran up and before we could stop him, he cocked his leg on the Daffodils. Poor bugs scared to death by Yellow Martian Giants and now doused in Acid Rain. I wonder if an overprotective parent bug may have just added an item to a miniature and a tad damp issue lists. We can wonder.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 83 Comments

The Black Hole…

I could look at these flowers all day. Stunning yellows with one sneaky violet crashing the daffodil party.

The school bus was late. Very late. Our son went into meltdown. Panic attacks over detentions, expulsions and all the associated ever increasing butterfly effects. All today’s carefully constructed plans are in tatters. It’s part and parcel of being a child with autism. We now have a plan for this type of eventuality. A hand written plan we keep safely by the front door. When I say plan it’s actually an old food shopping list. The plan Z list was pulled from the wall.

Tell me 5 things you can see.

Tell me 4 things you can hear.

Tell me 3 things you can touch.

Tell me 2 things you can smell.

Smile once and breathe.

Plan now says Dad get the car keys and drives you to school.

Thankfully today Plan Z worked. Distraction and switching to another orderly plan. It’s funny as a shopping list it was poor (I remember it missed off non essential stuff like bread, milk, pet food…. but as a go to plan in times of crisis – it has been a winner. It’s so flexible the actual words on the paper are irrelevant. It adds credibility to any plan I come up with in an emergency. Because that plan must be good as it’s the plan on that piece of paper – it’s Plan Z. As we reached the school gates order was starting to be restored in his soul. He made me smile with some of his responses.

“I can see bird poo on your car. I think it must have been a big bird.”

“I can see a couple of blue flowers in the Daffodil patch. Maybe they are mutations. Definitely beautiful mutations. Flowers are very welcoming.”

“Dad I can still see that cake you made yesterday. It was so funny how you got it to collapse in the middle. After all these years and still it messes up. The cake was so like a black hole. It was both a thing of wonder and a piece of terror. It’s a special talent Dad.”

As the great Terry Pratchett once said “Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom“.

So yes my sneaky practice run for this Sunday’s GREAT BLOGGERS BAKE-OFF didn’t go so well.

Hopefully you will join in the fun on the 24th.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 58 Comments

Embrace the stain….

Picking up from this mornings post. Spiez is just a perfect place. The building at the front of the picture is the hotel we would stay at. The mountain dominating at the back is the Niederhorn. Before our son was born I was practicing for a mountain race. As part of the training I managed to run up this beautiful mountain. I remember lying at the top ignoring the stunning view – just thinking do I run back down or call for a helicopter evacuation…

I recount this story as it came to me again this afternoon. Setting a goal, achieving it then rather than basking in the success you immediately worry about the next step or challenge.

This feels a bit like fighting the system for our son. So many peaks to climb. You climb one but you then immediately have to face a new climb. It can be soul destroying.

We have potentially found a specialist who will assess our son’s dyslexia. But now I need to find the money to pay for it (the leaking washing machine will have to survive another year before it’s replaced). AND I somehow need to find a way of getting the education system to adopt the recommendations of the assessment. I was speaking to another parent who has been trying unsuccessfully for two years to get her school to adopt the same specialists recommendations. Why do we make it so difficult for our kids…

You then see the news which is dominated by talk of Brexit. Our so called Prime Minister is trying to bribe another party with up to a billion pounds of further funding if they will vote for her shambles of a plan. And yet they can’t find the money to adequately fund our schools or mental health support services. She takes great delight in telling the rest of us that money doesn’t grow on a tree. Clearly our Leader values her own career and legacy higher than the kids of our country…… Sadly she is not the only world leader like that.

Then my mind drifts back to that mountain. The Niederhorn. I didn’t ‘get into the chopper’ in an Austrian accent but decided to run down. It was an interesting decent. As some breathless pillock had collapsed at the top into a fresh pile of some unknown and clearly legendary bird droppings. Running while trying to prevent passerby’s getting a good view of the your oddly coloured rear is just embarrassing. Rather than embracing the stain I just tried to run as quickly as possible while keeping my bum always pointing away from people. I can hear my dad saying ‘son as quick as you run you won’t increase the separation between your shorts and that stain’. Maybe that’s a really good analogy for state of our governments overall strategy……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 103 Comments

Daffodils and that pesky problem.

It might be cold. It might be windy. It might feel nothing like Spring. But at least the daffodils are out in force.

I couldn’t sleep last night. On a hill the wind tends to howl. And wow did it howl. It’s been like that for days. A number of the local tourist sites are closed on safety grounds.

So today my brain has been running a bit in neutral. Processing a barrage of questions.

“Dad why does Gordon Ramsey swear so much?”

“How is May still Prime Minister?”

“Has the Champions League draw taken place?”

“When can we go to see Captain Marvel?”

“Why do Daffodils have such a short flowering season and why is it in a time period which is notorious for poor weather?”

“Why haven’t they made a new series of Gravity Falls?”

“Why do we focus so much attention on the Battle of Hastings and William the Conqueror. Yet we never talk about the years proceeding the battle. They are just as important.”

“What’s a Gravity wave?”

“How old is Alice Cooper?”

and on and on.

And yet I managed to hold my own. It was that sort of day. Maybe not on top form but ticking off jobs.

  • Cleaned the Gerbil Cage without accidentally releasing the little darlings to cause havoc around the house,
  • Managed to negotiate a cheaper broadband deal,
  • Get the old laptop working again,
  • Completed this weeks work requirements,
  • Change a wiper blade on the car,
  • Repair some knee holes in jeans,
  • Sort out some problems with son’s school iPad,
  • Prepare meals for tonight,
  • Replace a hose in the hoover,
  • Finish the ironing,
  • Clean the bathroom,
  • Get all the outstanding bills pad,
  • Convince the Council to give us a free replacement wheely bin as our old one is held together with 2 rolls of tape.

But then the success came to a grinding halt. Failure in the face of an insurmountable problem. Defeated by a super complex Riemman Hypothesis. My version of Star Treks Kobayashi Maru.

Changing our son’s Duvet Cover.

How difficult can it be. The cover comes off so easy. But when you try to put it back on. Suddenly it’s like trying to play a game of Twister with Ninja Octopus. Gets twisted, Rides up. Goes in the wrong way. Decides to turn inside out. Suddenly the duvet appears to be covered in the worlds stickiest Velcro. It’s just a nightmare. SIXTY PESKY MINUTES later and the only thing I had achieved was to go into full Hulk Rage.

Come on Spring. Please arrive soon. Bring in the warmer weather so I can ditch the duvets and those demonic covers – for a wonderful couple of months. Daffodils remind you that those happy days are coming.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 73 Comments

Blue Croc

Captain Chaos with his beloved blue crocodile. That poor croc needs years of therapy.

***********************

When a parent dies it is so tough it is difficult to explain the feeling. That’s a so called adult speaking. Imagine what it’s like for a young kid.

I lost my dad when I was 21. He had been ill for years. I got the feeling during the last period of his life that he was trying to keep going just to see me graduate. Sadly he missed out by a few months. It was a numbing experience but the pain was mitigated a bit as I had been expecting it to happen for ages. I was sort of prepared. My mum died a couple of years back. It was a complete shock. But a five years earlier she had suffered a massive stroke. Doctors told us to prepare for the worst. Yet in a month she was back in her house – still able to live independently. In some respects it felt like the years after the stroke were a real bonus. She got to spend time with her grandson.

But for our son we have no mitigating factors. He had just been to his beloved grannies funeral and a week later his mum goes into hospital for some routine tests. His mum deteriorated rapidly and completely unexpectedly. He was visiting his mum in the hospice two weeks later. For someone so young that’s devastating.

We still get tears but now he can talk about his mum. He can laugh at the good memories. But the anxieties caused by that period of death are still impacting his daily life. He is so worried about becoming ill and also about losing others close to him. Today is common. We have had anxiety about catching illnesses. Worries about dying. On top of that every time I sneeze or cough he runs to make sure I’m ok. We try to find ways to ease the anxieties but it is still so tough for him…..

***********************

Son comes back from school to be greeted by Captain Chaos and a well chewed croc. That’s one thing that works.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 78 Comments

Bake-off

When I told our son about the Great Blogger Bake-off he smiled and said

“Oh dear Dad. It’s a good job they haven’t perfected actual food tasting over the internet.”

Very true. I remember the attempts which even the garden birds refused. We call it Weapons Grade cooking.

“You had better practice.”

Good idea.

So tonight we had a practice. And what a practice…

Sticking to my current dietary fad. My attempt is going to be Gluten Free and Dairy Free. AND now Sugar Free. It’s a good job every food cupboard has at least 3 jars of out of date honey…. Also found 2 jars of out of date pesto – probably not much use in baking.

“Wow Dad is that supposed to be a cake. Or is it a pancake.”

Sadly son it’s not a pancake.

“Is it ok if I don’t try it. Better not give it to birds – just in case.”

We will be publishing posts detailing what the challenge is

for THE GREAT BLOGGERS’ BAKE-OFF all of next week.

Look out for future posts!

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 80 Comments

Cold

Today we have an outbreak of manbola. Streaming cold, coughing, sneezing, sore throat …. just didn’t want to get out of bed. I have to admit I am a …….

The dog walk must have been some sight. Gloves, 2 T-shirt’s, Fleece, Jumper, body warmer, waterproof and woolly hat. And that was just the dog.

It’s one of the big downsides of being a single parent. Whatever the relative severity of the manbola – you don’t have the option to not get out of bed or just sit in a chair with a hot water bottle. No one to share the workload. So you just have to get on with your jobs while croaking out conversations with our son. Powered by hot ginger drinks and tea. It’s days like this you want to drop your caffeine ban.

It also gives you plenty of worries. It emphasises that many single parents (and a number of parenting couples) often operate without having an option b in place. If something serious happens to a parent(s) what happens to the kids. It’s a sobering thought.

I am an amateur at these things. So many parents have had much worse situations to deal with for so many more years. I have so so much respect and admiration to you heroes. So we battle on. In the scheme of things manbola isn’t that bad really.

AND one definite plus of manbola is that you just can’t smell the cat litter when you change it….