Being back in my home country
I realise I haven’t updated this personal part of my site for some time – a year in fact. Most of my time is taken up with building and maintaining this site and I find it more invigorating to reach out to people in need of expat information and assistance. I don’t particularly want, or need, to blog my personal life any more. I don’t believe people are interested in reading the minutiae of my expat life. It’s just life, but lived in another country.
This year has been extremely busy for me and tremendously stressful. I’ve spent two (separate) months back in the UK. Spending this amount of time away makes it very hard to settle back in your current country again. And for the first time since I left in 2006, I felt homesick.
Creating wonderful memories
Much of this time in the UK was spent driving many hours a day doing school stuff with my daughter. We also went to London and I took her to her first gig at Brixton Academy, which was incredible. Seeing her face at being in front of her most favourite band ever was priceless! And I thought they were pretty good too and thoroughly enjoyed reliving my youth.
I visited lovely friends around the country and worked hard on various physical projects – painting, decorating and gardening. While, mostly, the end results of all this driving were wonderful times spent with my girl and my friends, the physical aspects were exhausting.
We did create some wonderful memories though, and that’s the main point of it all.
…and sad ones
But then, last month, during my final week back in the UK , tragedy struck and someone very close to me was killed in a car crash. She is someone I would consider as my niece, although we aren’t related. (I just can’t use the past tense when talking about her).
I tried everything I could to postpone my flight home so I could stay and support her mother – my oldest friend – but it wasn’t to be and I flew home with a heavy heart.
The death of someone you love is unbearable. When you live overseas the shock and grief merges with overwhelming guilt and helplessness at not being able to be there to help those left behind.
I am thankful, however, that we did unexpectedly meet up a few days before her sudden death, so I have another good memory to cling on to.
The words above are the last posting she placed on her Facebook page. It was how she lived: a beautiful, kind, happy, positive and honest young woman. And a good way to look at life, even if the sentiment was highlighted by her death.
Rest in peace darling Emma.
