FEARLESS… I AM NOT!

 

Nothing scares me except Locusts and Grasshoppers!

Watching your every move with those beady eyes, just so that they can launch at you when you least expect it. Those green and brown scaly bodies and skinny legs, and wings that go clickity clackity when they fly through the air.

Give me snakes and spiders any day.

Throw a grasshopper and I’ll run for the hills. Anything else and I’ll stand and face it head on. People, life, work, love, values, beliefs.

But… there is one thing that I keep shifting to the back of my mind and am refusing to deal with, one thing i’m not sure I am ready to face. The one and only thing I truly fear. The death of my gran.

Lily Ashford, 84 years old this December. She is my life! She has been my mother, my father, my best friend, my confidant. To this day, she is all these things and more. And now she is the same for Jorja. Her great gran, her best friend, her confidant.

Meme (her nickname since I started talking), looks after Jorja every day after school. I think most days it drives Jorja mad. But you can only imagine a 15 year old and an 84 year old trying to reach a compromise on a TV channel … most times they settle on a crime program, probably highly inappropriate for Jorja. But apparently it beats watching a movie made in 1940. Meme forces ice cream, biscuits, chocolate and cake down Jorja’s throat most days… hmmm yes. But by time I get there to rescue Jorja from the jaws of the cookie monster, Meme has packed a bag of groceries for us with a little something for dinner just to help us get through the week.

Lily is the most independent “old lady” I have ever known. She barely sits still (now I know where I get it from). She takes a 5km ride around the race course, on her mountain bike, a couple times a week, and when she gets back home she takes Tickey (her highly anxious dependent mutt) for his first walk of the day. That’s just the beginning of her average day. Movies, shopping centres, visiting friends… on the go non stop until the afternoon when Jorja arrives from school. By the end of the day, Tickey has been dragged around the neighbourhood about 3 times, just so Meme can have a walk.

She says Jorja and I keep her young, but she just refuses to get old!

We have been through so much together. When she lost a daughter, I lost a mother. When my grandfather had an affair and left her, she cried on my shoulder; when I was a new mom, she was my rock. Every time my heart broke, she helped pick up the pieces. When things were tough financially, we ate jam on bread. When I left school I went to work to pay bills while my friends went to study. No matter how tough things were, we always had each other. We have laughed together and cried together, we have shouted and hugged it out; and if you want to know where I learnt to swear, just have a conversation with my gran, she has a pretty foul mouth on her.

Lily is not your typical grey haired / blue rinse granny, who sits around sipping tea in the botanic gardens with her friends. This gran is out wearing jeans and boots in winter, and still dyes her hair black, and who sits by my pool in summer in her Itsy Bitsy bikini making sure she gets a good tan while sipping on lemonade.

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So when she is gone how will I go on without her. How will I pick up the pieces. How will I be strong for Jorja when I know I will not be able to be strong for me. My heart aches at the thought of having to face the reality that at 84 she may not have forever left.

I fear for this day. And I fear I will fail Jorja as I fall apart. I am afraid.

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everyone has a story

Family…

I lost my mom 19 years ago. But actually I lost her twice. First when I was 10 and then again when I was 24.

My mom fell pregnant with me at 18 years old. And, as arseholes do, my father left her to deal with it on her own. So based on what i’ve been told, my mom was into a little weed and booze, and having a baby was probably not a part of her plans at 18. Rightly so!

My grandparents looked after me and I guess my mom was pretty much like a big sister and not really a mom. She would visit and leave, until I got older when I started going to stay with her. Problem was that she still liked her beer, but her boyfriend liked it even more, and he couldn’t handle it very well. I have vivid memories of bloody noses, being kicked out of bars (them not me… I was just hiding under the table), my mom and I hitching home because he was too drunk to drive us, oh and the neighbours dragging me out the flat because he was hitting her.

Broken noses, cracked ribs, black eyes… what kid deserves to remember her mom like that. 

She left him… eventually. I was 10 and was finally going to live with my mom. My gran lived in this block of flats and there was an empty flat upstairs, so my mom and I were going to move in there. Perfect! The day we were supposed to be collecting my mom’s furniture and moving it to the new flat, plans fell through and we ended up going for a drive with a friend of hers (a new boyfriend from work). We were out for the day, and on the way home, the friend had a blackout behind the wheel, causing us to go directly into oncoming traffic on the freeway. A head on collision – a brain damaged mom. 1983

2 mins before it happened – my mom was singing along to the radio – I told her I was tired so she said I should lay down on the back seat and sleep. I had been leaning between the two chairs. I only spoke to my mom once again in the ambulance, she asked if I was ok and I said yes, we never spoke again.

That night my mom went into a coma, fluid on the brain from hitting the dashboard. When she woke up 10 weeks later, she was brain damaged.

The friend … he broke his ankle.

I was black and blue from the impact. And emotionally scarred for the rest of my life. And I’m sure he lives with a serious amount of guilt too. But how would I know because he disappeared.

My mom was 2 months pregnant at the time of the accident. At the age of 11 my sister was born, and put up for adoption.

The hardest part was seeing a beautiful young woman trapped in a body that doesn’t work, with a mind that functions perfectly. I remember how she would shed a tear if we read her a sad story, or she would give a little laugh (more like a snort) if we told her something funny. She loved being kept up to date with all the gossip and latest dramas. A regular treat was an outing to the park just up the road, my gran and I would push the wheelchair there and sit and feed the ducks, just to get mom out the home for half an hour. So strange, I haven’t thought about these things for so long.

8th May 1997. I got home from work, my gran said she had a call from the home and my mom was sick with flu. They were a little worried as she wasn’t doing well. My gran went to the home and phoned me a couple hours later saying that my mom would be ok, that she was resting and that my gran would be home in the morning. I put the phone down and walked away. It rang again, I picked it up and it was a sister from the home. My mom has just died… I told her she was wrong because my gran just said she was ok. She died while my gran and I were talking… Pneumonia.

By the time my mom finally left this world, she had faded away to just skin and bones. She was nothing but a skeleton. This time I lost her for good.

I never got to know my mom, what little I do know of her is what family have told me. All I have is a few photos, and even less memories. Most of which are sadly not very good ones.

Terry Ashford – Gone but never forgotten

 

 

the dark side…

And once you are there… it’s hard to find your way back.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 in January 2015. I promised myself I would not let it affect me or get me down, that I would not let it change me. Truth is, it has.

I’ve suffered from Depression for as long as I can remember. And in 2014 when my life felt like it was spiralling out of control, I knew it was more than just the big D. In just one session my shrink diagnosed me with BP2 and PTSD. Hell who knew it was that obvious!

A car accident when I was 9 set years of unresolved issues, guilt, sadness, hurt, anger, questions, etc in motion, and resulted in too much stress for a young girl to carry. I guess years of this and no therapy, a constant smile on my face and being strong for everyone around me eventually took it’s toll. 

That day I lost my mom! She didn’t die, but she had a severe head injury and went into a coma for 10 weeks. When she finally came out of it, she was brain damaged and would never talk, walk or be herself again. A beautiful woman at 28 years old, now a skeleton in a wheelchair. 

Terry Ashford – A beautiful Soul

The last year has been the hardest, I’ve withdrawn from life. I use my new house as an excuse to stay home. I never go out, find it hard to socialise, and struggle to get motivated to do anything. All of which is so unlike me.

The meds make me numb! I can’t and don’t feel too happy or too sad. I float between the two, and most days just feel lost.

But when you have a daughter and are a single mom, you have to keep your head up high and be strong. I don’t let her see me when I’m at my lowest, those are the moments when the thoughts are the darkest and I’m the weakest. She doesn’t deserve to see me like that. The only thing I hope is that she will never have to experience what I have gone through and that she will be a happy, content teenager and adult.