11 months later

I come to my blog to see if it is still here... Ah, yes! 
For some reason last year my list of blogs I follow all disappeared.  I lost heart to get them back!
PLUS.
Battling with an ailing, failing computer
P. L. U. S. exhausted after the making of my kitchen I just gave up!
I am Emptied!
I gave up because I felt I was being followed which felt uncomfortable knowing that I was being read to see where I was, what I was doing, saying, thinking.  Yes I know,  in former days it was nice to know people are looking at my blog out of interest... It's what a blog is for!

Those who know me know that I have been quite public with my emotions in this blog. It was started in 2010 to record the renovation of my French property bought in a moment of desperation and madness it seems if I turn the clock back ... the need to for a base, security, safety.. a bolthole!
Crabby me needs her Cancerian hermit shell!

I also gave up because in September I headed off to UK for my mother's 90th birthday.. and did not like what I met...buried head in the sand - IN DENIAL! Shocked!
It is always a visit of three weeks with couch surfing from place to place. I am always aghast at the price of things and realisation of how 'out of touch'  I have become with LIFE whilst Restless in France.   After encircling the south of England and enjoying driving to cousins, friends, son and daughter I drove homewards the long drive to my cat!
Within a few weeks my daughter and grand daughter came and we had a wonderful time but then the news arrived that my cousin's husband had died.  In November another three weeks of round the south of UK,  this time with family for three days at John's funeral.  Such a loss of a dedicated father and amazing architect, artist, Aston Martin lover and mechanic - a personable kind, soft, warm hearted, intelligent, loving, family man  for whom I had enormous admiration and respect.

Then unannounced I visited my mother and 'quel horreur' but all ok ... or was it????   I was rather alarmed that my brother, two years older than me with a lifetime disability of cerebral palsy having never lived anywhere else but under the wing of my mother did not know what the plans were should she die or he die!   I did not pose enough questions.  It felt intrusive . I also told my brother that I did not wish the stepfather to know I had been asking questions. RED ALERT!  LIFE is Hard alone and with the presence of a stepfather whom I now see that his presence on every visit I have made for the last x years was probably intended to ensure I was never given information!!!!!!!!!  After 21 years I know him not except who would like someone who has been in prison for GBH!
Try to make allowances. Can leopards change their spots? Can pussycats stop scratching?

Back home, after the long haul drive I came across my house,  cat sitter and wondered what is going on!!! We got on with more WORK as I had agreed his stay until the new year... to help him out... to help me out... give and take as friends are supposed to do!  It was winter!
Just as I was catching up on admin STUFF, cleaning and gardening tasks,  the phone rang in the building where I had not been sleeping but to which I had moved that morning at about THE TIME IT HAPPENED.  I'd felt for the first time for some time distressed in the early hours at about one pm... I'd gathered up my duvet and swaddled myself  along the full length of my L shaped house to the room with the unmade bed - my bed, as after Airbnb guests had left I had not lit the woodburner in that part of the house hence did not go there to sleep.
At 9h French time the phone rang... No she is not dead but has had a massive stroke.. At that time I did not know what it meant... but said I would be there...  After a lot of faffing around trying to inform people, book how to travel, not knowing how long I would be there for......incredibly calm prepared for the worst,  I drove again, solo, the long journey, though this time through the tunnel and wow what a price that was! ...and non stop apart from two pee breaks of no more than 15 minutes max... until I arrived at the hospital to surprise unintentionally the stepfather who expected me in another 12 hours!
Like the wind... I kept telling her to hang on until I got there.
On the drive I asked her to hang on like the wind!

I am still in bereavement I guess..

Tears fall like tears of a child who has lost her mother but I lost my mother years ago when I was never hugged or told that I was loved and when a dog was treated with a bone better than I .. hence why perhaps many people say i am like a dog with a bone over issues and problems!!!!!
Canine anecdotes have abounded.

To cut STORY short, 12 days in a hospital institution was like being in 'a no man's land.'
So kind they gave me a key to a room where I could stay each night with the proviso that they never knew if someone else would need it.
My admiration for the positivity of nurses and doctors was off the end of the scale... one could neverv thank them enough for being who they are and doing what they do.
Angels with wings to fly to those needing physical, mental or emotional help.
I was not a patient ... nor was the stepfather but they treated us as if we were whilst they cared unstintingly giving enormous respect to my dear mother, dead but alive on the bed...

It is OK to grieve  for the loss of a mother... for the loss of never knowing what she really thought about me.. although she once said I was clever... NO I am not!... and the last real interaction was when she said in November 2015 that I have everything I need?   Have I?? Even if I asked her she would not have said... ... COUPLED with the statement was a long hard STARE!!!!!!!

In the last few years I have never been able to sit for long because of fibromyalgia (but recently that phenomena has changed ) whereas the stepfather could sit all say and night by her bed and not move!   My brother came and went from his home every day .. there was a dog to look after ... thankfully only the one after all the years of breeding, showing and the rest!

It was almost Christmas day with nowhere really to stay when I learned I was Executor.. but not a beneficiary and the implications ... when there was no money to pay for solicitor fees.
I was naive to say YES. It would have fallen to my brother to do if I had not said YES.

Distraught with what I learned about circumstances I drove the long distance home again ( for it is HOME despite my current feelings ...  to be in my own home with my own bedcovers and my own lifestyle but oh my the unexpected return met chaos in every room!!!!!! I spent two weeks sorting it, doing christmas with a small c for one day, then back to UK, where I stayed for the funeral and the aftermath couch surfing with THINGS TO DO and the LAW to UPHOLD when I could see that all seemed incorrect!!!!!!
What proof have I?  There are rightful entitlements on some levels and no rights at all on others.. such is UK LAW!
There is a clause in the will which cannot be fulfilled.
That clause has been superceded by the sale of the property for one pound .
The will does not mention the shop and the flat on the same plot of land so how does all that work?
I have not yet asked the two men who live in that house. FEAR of the man who has been in prison for GBH! 
I spent January and February with every hour awake and asleep going over and over injustice and my fear was compounded with verbal abuse!
At the end of the shortest month a new pile of poo developed and the outcome of the request for Grant of Probate arrived about June 7th...
Since February I have had a lot of work in the garden and trying to continue the questions of almost every day for six months I am no nearer proving the truth.. ..which I can see!!!!!!!!!! which eats me...
CUT...

It is JULY.. I must make more effort to avoid the paralysis I find myself in, the depression, the total collapse of energy in the last week when I feel I can no longer carry on but I must. I have no choice. The mind has to be reprogrammed. It is very difficult alone. 

ADDENDUM
I do not always assume that I am the only one to grieve and be in bereavement.
NO.
Most people have struggles.
I an sure I have tried to turn negativity into positivity in France.
It fails and I try again.

I don't actually know what would make a difference.
I suppose a sense of purpose in life.
I suppose a sense of being valued.
I suppose a change is as good as a rest but I increasingly hear the words
"I can't carry on doing what I am doing"
NONE OF US CAN!
I would like to find happiness somewhere for more than a few nano seconds or hours having fun in the village or with others...
BUT WHERE?

it has to start within me... and facing the task of clearing out is not easy alone!

We would all like a life half full ... at least half full... 
I WILL END THIS ................... for now...