The Lady in the Back Row

Worked between two houses today, animals to sort out, then knocked off early to take my granddaughter to an eye appointment.

Poor little thing also came home with a nasty graze on her knee after another child tripped her at school. One of those days where everything seems to pile on at once.

The school had placed her in the red team, but we asked if she could move to blue instead. With everything happening lately and her mum being so unwell, they were really understanding and happily changed it for her. Small things matter to kids, especially during hard times.

Feeling pretty tired today. Maybe the nicotine patch. Maybe just life catching up with me a bit.

Taking a couple of days away from the hospital too. After nearly two years of juggling work, family, hospital life and trying to hold everything together, it’s starting to wear me down.

Still grateful to have a workplace giving me flexibility while trying to manage it all.

I’ve realised I missed another Sunday writing again.

I honestly don’t even know what I’m thinking or doing lately.

Life feels like one long blur of hospital visits, work, stress, and trying to hold everything together.

My daughter has been in hospital for almost a month this time.

I am trying to hold together two households, help raise the kids, keep working full-time, and somehow keep functioning while watching someone I love fight to survive.

They started her on a medication that is supposed to be a game changer, and also the last option left.

Three weeks in, and nothing has changed yet. She’s still relying on a nasogastric tube, and the waiting is heartbreaking.

I have been smoking too much, drinking too much, and honestly I don’t even know why I started drinking.

Maybe exhaustion.

Maybe trying to switch my brain off for five minutes.

But today Is a new day.

Woke up at 3.00am, can’t sleep.

Putting a patch on to try to stop smoking, won’t be having a drink.

Trying to look after myself properly.

Trying to be a bit healthier this week.

I’m still here.

Still getting up. Still trying.

And for now, that has to be enough.

Today started with a false alarm literally.

I accidentally set the alarm for p.m. instead of a.m., so the whole household unintentionally ended up having a day off.

In the end, maybe everyone needed it.

Everybody’s sick, exhausted, and running on empty after a huge few weeks.

Even with the slow start, I got a lot done.

Finished the garden, caught up on everything I needed to do, and polished the car while the sun was out.

One of those crisp sunny days where you try to make life feel normal for a little while.

I also took my dog over to my daughter’s house because her dog seems so lonely since the little dog died.

Animals grieve too.

The house probably feels quieter for them as well.

And strangely, there’s relief mixed into sadness because now I don’t have to stress about kennels anymore, there’s a spare kennel sitting empty.

The hardest part of the day was the hospital.

We thought my daughter was finally coming home today, even with the NG tube still in.

We got there, only to find out she wasn’t being discharged after all, so we turned around and came home again.

Another false start.

Another emotional swing after more than two years of hospital visits, admissions, setbacks and waiting rooms.

When you realise she’s probably spent nearly half of that time in hospital, it changes everybody around her too.

And honestly, I can feel how much it’s changed me.

I have a very bad temper.

My patience feels worn away. Maybe life’s trying to teach me something through all of this, because empathy gets hard when people are exhausted for this long. Illness changes people.

Survival mode narrows their world.

Sometimes it feels like my daughter worries more about her nurses than the people carrying everything outside the hospital walls, her kids, her family, the life still waiting for her out here.

But getting angry doesn’t change any of it.

So today becomes another reminder to keep trying to let things go.

Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Some days surviving the emotions quietly is the biggest achievement of all.

Eight today.

Happy Birthday to my youngest granddaughter.

The day was packed full of little adventures, sushi train with her best friend, bowling, and riding her brand-new hoverboard with all the confidence in the world.

Watching kids at that age is something special; fearless one minute, laughing uncontrollably the next.

Then came a hospital visit, a reminder that life never really pauses, even on birthdays.

But the night still finished on a beautiful note with a spectacular light show in the park nearby.

Colours glowing through the trees, lights dancing across the darkness, kids running around excited while adults quietly took it all in.

Then we came home and her brother and I sang Happy Birthday while she blew out the candles of her chosen ice cream cake.

The kind of simple childhood memory that feels enormous when you’re eight years old.

Days like today are exhausting and emotional all at once, but they are the days memories are built from, family, friendship, resilience, laughter, and making the most of the moments in between everything else life throws at us.

Eight years old today.

Growing up far too quickly.

This week has felt heavy.

The weather turned colder almost overnight, heaters dragged back out, coats back on, the house carrying that winter feeling again.

One simple birthday wish from my granddaughter this year: for her mum to be home and well.

Not toys or parties or big presents. Just that.

A little girl wanting her mother better.

It hits hard hearing that out loud.

And hard too watching my daughter looking so unwell, exhausted, skeletal, with barely any spark left in her face.

You keep trying to hold everything together around it, meals, school runs, washing, appointments, work, phone calls, while carrying the worry quietly underneath all of it.

Yesterday’s flash flooding sent rainwater running down my wall, enough to bubble the paint. Another thing added to the list. Insurance claim lodged this morning, trades already calling and coming through.

Life keeps moving whether you have the energy for it or not.

Last night, around five o’clock, we said goodbye to little Fei Fei.

She was seventeen, which is a long life for a small dog, and she lived it well.

She was part of the everyday rhythm of the house, always there, always familiar, just quietly existing in the spaces that made up our days.

My daughter had two little Chihuahuas.

Perry was the first to go, a couple of years ago now.

He was about seventeen or eighteen too.

It’s taken a couple of years, but now his little mate has followed him.

Today, I’m burying Fei Fei in the backyard, right next to Perry.

That spot matters.

It means they’re together again, side by side where they belong.

From the kitchen, you don’t just look out the window, you look at them.

That’s where they are now, in the yard, part of the home still, just in a different way.

It’s very sad, but it’s also clear they both had beautiful, long lives.

Not every dog gets that.

My granddaughter wants to plant a flower on top, something that will grow there.

A small continuation of life in the same place.

It’s bittersweet, grief and gratitude sitting side by side.

I’ve taken the day off today.

There’s a specialist appointment, but otherwise I’m not putting pressure on anything.

Just letting the day unfold as it needs to.

It’s a nice day, even with everything.

Today feels like it’s moving in two different directions at once.

The little dog is fading, then somehow not. She slows right down, barely moving, and you think this is it — and then she finds something from somewhere, a second wind, a small burst of life that lifts her again. It’s hard to watch, that back and forth between holding on and letting go. You don’t quite know which moment is the one that matters most, so you just stay present for all of them.

In between that, life doesn’t pause. I ducked into the office quickly this morning, just long enough to swap over to a new computer. One of those practical, necessary jobs that has to get done regardless of everything else going on. No time to linger.

Now I’m back home, set up and working, waiting for the sound of the kids finishing school — that shift in the day when everything changes pace again. The house will fill up, the noise will return, and the evening routine will kick in.

It’s busy. It’s full. It’s a lot of moving parts all at once.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, there’s this quiet awareness that time is doing its thing — with the dog, with the day, with everything — whether you’re ready for it or not.

It was a slow kind of weekend, the kind where you don’t rush, but somehow still don’t stop.

Just doing what needed to be done, moving through it all without urgency, yet still feeling the quiet weight of it.

The rain finally came after a stretch of unusually warm days. It softened everything.

The air, the ground, even the pace of the day.

The plants soaked it in, and so did I in a way, just being home, in my own space, listening to it fall.

Even with a bit of juggling, it felt good to be here.

But underneath that calm, things are shifting.

My girl is still unwell.

That hasn’t changed.

It sits in the background of everything, constant and unresolved, shaping the way each day feels.

And her little dog, seventeen years old now.

Last night I really thought she might die.

She wasn’t moving much at all.

I brought her inside, kept her warm, stayed close.

She made it through the night, but she’s still barely moving today.

You can feel it, she’s right at that edge now.

Not quite gone, but not really here in the way she used to be.

It’s a strange space to sit in, this in-between.

Holding onto small comforts, knowing they’re temporary. Watching, waiting, not being able to do much more than just be there.

So the weekend was slow.

Quiet on the surface.

But underneath, it carried a lot.

Just the usual weekend things. Waiting, hoping my girl starts to get better.

Five days in now, and yesterday she still wasn’t any better.

I’ll head to the skate park, I promised my granddaughter I would take her yesterday and didn’t get there, so she wasn’t too happy.

I’ll check both houses for the animals, grab some groceries, then go to the hospital.

I haven’t spoken to my other granddaughters for seems like months, so I will check in and text the one I can.

No energy today.

Just doing what needs to be done, one thing at a time.

Friday slipped past me again.

It was a good day though, slow, easy, nothing pushed.

I stayed at home for the first time in ages.

No rush, no pressure.

Just pottering around, doing bits and pieces, letting the day stretch out instead of trying to fill it.

Came back to my own space, my own bed, my yard… and realised how much I’d missed it.

Work slowed down, I slowed down with it.

It was nice.