Three years on...

I can’t quite believe that it’s been three years without my brother and I can’t really say how this time has gone. I can still barely believe he’s not around, but the space gets harder to ignore.  And with that comes the ability to learn to live with it, I suppose.

Anyway, it has been bugging me that another year is rolling round and I haven’t completed my challenge. Once I got thinking, I realised, I probably have… with a little extra push this week I’ve made it all the way to… 51. So so close…

Go to Japan: crazy, crazy place, and I loved every minute of it. And of course, it brought with it some more firsts that could only happen in Japan…

Akihabara in Tokyo... crazy, crazy place

Visit a Maid Café: awkward… but an experience (if you don't know what a maid cafe is, Wikipedia has some answers for you). 

A (more than) quarterly update…

Four months, a third of a year, much too long to leave a blog un-updated…

During that time, the second anniversary of my brother’s death has come and gone, and with it the deadline to complete my 52 Firsts. It become quite apparent, as July 12 edged closer, that I was not going to fit everything in. But it didn’t bother me too much, I thought I would just carry on going until I got to 52, no matter how long it took me.

On the 14 July 2013, I ran my 10k. Well, I ran most of it and walked a few 100m. The weather was blazing hot and my knee started twinging somewhere just after the 5k mark but I still managed to complete it in the respectable time of 1 hour, 2 mins and 38 secs. Not quite within the hour I had wanted but still not bad for a first attempt.

After it was all over, I felt a massive amount of relief and pride. But then this soon gave way to a feeling of emptiness. It took quite a few weeks of reflection for me to actually pick myself up again and start living life with a positive focus, rather than just seeing the depressing side to everything.

But I am well and truly there now. Life is a positive experience and there is so much you can take from just living your day to day life. 

So that is probably the biggest thing that has happened to me in the last few months. But here is an update on what else has been going on…

Me with my medal after completeing the 10k

I was the third highest fundraiser for CALM in the London 10k – I cannot say thank you enough to everybody that sponsored me and supported me (it was amazing to have my family there cheering me on). And, despite raising over £1000 for CALM, I was still surprised when I got a letter personally thanking me for my efforts, along with a voucher for cocktails for me and five friends as a thank you. I think I can safely cross the ‘Do something big…’ first off of my list.

Week 1...

There have been a couple of firsts already this week. Thursday marked a year since the death of my brother. I cannot explain how awful I felt that day. Even after I had worked up the drive to get out of bed, I climbed back under the duvet at one point and considered staying there (and not just for the day). 

I had deliberately made sure I had no work planned for the day; I knew I would be in no state to concentrate. But my family had plans for the afternoon and evening, which included a trip to the cemetery, a picnic in the park and a trip to see Rhys Darby AKA Murray from Flight of the Concords - we thought that's where Nathan would have been that evening if he was still with us. I think this was a fitting way to mark the day. And I actually enjoyed the show. In some ways it is good to have some time as a family where we have a shared sense of grieving. Sometimes it is all too easy to carry on about our individual lives without acknowledging that we're all thinking of him. 

Today has been another first. My lovely little niece, my first and only niece who was born a few weeks after Nath's death, was baptised. She looked so lovely in her little white dress and was so good. Despite not being particularly religious myself, and despite the obvious trials of family get-togethers when one person is so obviously missing, it was a really lovely day.

That may seem enough for my first week of ‘firsts’ but I feel the need to do something else. 

"When you feel helpless, help someone." - Aung San Suu Kyi

I saw this quote recently on a website for a project called We-are-lucky (a brilliant experiment in giving, you should take a look if you haven't heard of it already). Helpless would be one adjective I would use to describe how I feel at the moment. I feel helpless in the face of what has happened. Helpless to control my emotions. 

But, most of all, I feel helpless to help other people. In particular, I feel helpless to help the rest of my family.