Enough Already

I have entered a rather melancholy state of late. Bad stuff keeps happening to perfectly good people and it keeps missing me and mine by a hair's breadth, which should make me happy but, which only makes me more anxious. How close can you get before the falling axe chops something off....?

Firstly, on the 29th of June, my lovely friend Rebecca, from Tapdancing On The Edge of Reason posted a photo of her eldest son on her facebook page. I didn't think much of it until a day or so later I noticed the flood of tributes follow it up. Thomas, a 16 year old guitar playing, purple haired, living, breathing, loving son, was drowned in a riptide. Around about the same time, half way across the world I had welcomed my own girl back from her European adventure. The irony was gutwrenching.

A few weeks passed and the BA and I put our hands and hearts to the grindstone in preparation for the arrival of my dad on July 18th. We were cleaning up the room vacated by No 2 Son back in December, ensuring it was once again fit for human habitation. The work was hard and took longer than we thought. On the Thursday night I was up until 3.30am laying carpet tiles and it was after only a few hours of snatched sleep that we leaped into the car to collect him from his early morning Singapore Airlines flight.

The red line shows the shortest route, the purple shows the route my father's plane took.

His journey occurred on the 17th and 18th of July. I met my father at the airport with the knowledge that nearly 300 innocent people, happily traveling to their homes, holidays, school or work, lay strewn across the Ukrainian countryside. Did they know what was happening as they fell? I can only pray that they were taken quickly.

Holding my dad and my daughter close, we made our way home. But there was more.

Back in June when the BA was travelling, she made many friends at a party hostel in Budapest.

At a place called Carpe Noctem, the BA met Haley Rue. I first saw her in posts like this...

There she is, to the right of my BA. 

Shortly afterwards she posted this on the BA's facebook site.

 

I will not be making Haley's wedding dress. This beautiful 19 year old also drowned, in a whirlpool at the base of waterfall in Germany.

Since this travesty, the bad news has continued: there are friends losing children, or nieces, to cancer and motor neuron disease. One of the most experienced, well loved teachers in our school,  is battling bowel and liver cancer as we speak and another friend, who was an integral part of our arrival in 2003, died from cancer last week. Then there is Gaza.  My friend Jill, from Twipply Skwood  (Try this At Home) blogged with a relief, bordering on hysteria, as her son flew in safely from Israel last week.

I know bad stuff happens but seriously, it feels like we are under attack.

I am just hugging my BA for all she is worth.......