Lle Llywela

I haven't posted in a while - is anyone still reading here? How are we all coping in this time of plague? Lockdown has been a weird experience, no? Almost weirder still now that it is lifting slightly, so that we find ourselves living in this strange sort of half-and-half world.

As of one week ago today, I am now 'bubbled up' with my parents as an extended household, which means we are allowed to visit each other inside our houses and I can have Layla-May for sleepovers once more, which means my 69-year-old mum finally gets some much-needed respite from the full time care of an active 4-year-old. Layla has found our prolonged separation very hard, video calls and, more lately, picnics in the garden just weren't enough; until mid-March she had been with me every single weekend for two full years, and semi-regularly before that. Weekends with Aunty Jo have been her routine for as far back as she can remember, so the sudden loss of them was a huge break in the routine of a child who struggles with separation anxiety at the best of times, thanks to her hopeless parents. She was utterly ecstatic to be back, spent the weekend trying to reclaim every activity she ever remembers us doing together, and kept getting emotional about how lovely it was to spend time together again. My poor baby. I have a week off work at the end of July so will probably have her for most of that, to make up for lost time.

My brother has also got that same week off, so my older sister and her husband have booked an Air B'n'B in Cardiff for a few days that week, now that such accommodation has re-opened, so we can have at least some kind of holiday together, as a family, since our planned week together in West Wales at Easter got cancelled. It remains to be seen how well their children cope with the journey, mind - they've never travelled so far before!

We are still waiting on the adoption. Everything was on hold for a while, thanks to lockdown, then as the courts were still handling some cases remotely, D&R managed to submit the adoption paperwork and waited for it to go through...only for it to be returned because the social worker had completed her section incorrectly! So they had to start again from scratch and resubmit. Yet another delay in a process fraught with complication. The children have been with D&R for 10 months now and are doing well, in general. The pandemic lockdown hasn't been easy for them, since it followed on from an extended adoption bubble followed by an informal semi-lockdown caused by a stalker - they thought for a while the children's location had been uncovered by the birth family and were on the point of organising an impromptu move out of area, but in the end it turned out to be a local woman with dementia who thought Miss E was her granddaughter. So with pandemic lockdown coming hard on the heels of that experience, they have all been slightly stir crazy, locked up in the house together for so many months without a break! Then, ridiculously, D&R got harassed by the children's social worker over Miss E not having started nursery - this during a nationwide lockdown with all the schools closed! The social worker hen demanded evidence of home schooling, which was easily provided since D is a highly qualified teacher with 25 years of experience behind her, the children are receiving an excellent home education, but she shouldn't have to prove it - 'regular' families aren't being asked to prove that they are educating their children at home. E&G are still in the 'looked after children' system, sure, but only because their adoption hasn't yet gone through - they have been placed for adoption and are no longer at risk, so why are the adoptive parents being scrutinised as if they were no better than the birth family? Are all foster placements treated in this way? Miss E was even all signed up for a place at nursery, she just couldn't take it up until the nursery re-opened - and then the experience of starting nursery unsettled her all over again, just another upheaval in her troubled young life. Little G, meanwhile, has hit the terrible twos and wants everyone to know it!

But these hurdles aside, the children have bonded well with D&R as a family and are growing up fast, three and two years old now, their previously delayed development coming on in leaps and bounds.

What else is going on? My cousin with terminal cancer is still with us and is doing better than was first feared. We have an extended family Zoom session every week, an ever-fluctuating mix of aunts, uncles and cousins, and he comes along to that most weeks. The cancer is spreading, they found new tumours in his brain and pleural cavity just the other week, and he is finding it increasingly difficult to string a sentence together, but he continues to make the effort - and manages to win the quiz most weeks, as well. I just wish he and his partner had been able to have their planned wedding before everything shut down. In theory they could try to schedule a replacement wedding now, even if with no guests, but I'm not sure they have the heart for it anymore, after everything.

Meanwhile, my very frail aunt L is back in hospital. Again. She has been deteriorating steadily this year - she had a fall and broke her hip early into lockdown, so spent a good couple of months in hospital, with the family unable to visit while she has been increasingly unable to cope with the phone that is now her sole means of communication. She finally came home from hospital two weeks ago, with a full care package in place, and within a week had fallen and had to be taken back in. When my uncle spoke to her the next day, she told him she was surprised when the ambulance reached the hospital because she'd thought the paramedics were just taking her for a nice little ride as a treat. Today she told me that being in hospital is like a nice little holiday. She is increasingly confused - and she's had scar tissue in her brain for years, ever since contracting a rare bacterial infection almost a decade ago, hasn't really been right ever since, but seems to be declining into full blown dementia just lately. Her only daughter, who has power of attorney, lives in London and is neurotic about her mother's health yet only rarely actually visits to monitor how well she is or isn't coping, living alone. It is all very worrying - especially with the pandemic, to which my aunt is exceptionally vulnerable, given the fragility of her health.

My 88 year old Nan, meanwhile, hasn't left her first floor flat since Christmas and we're worried that she might not be able to manage the stairs now, if and when she ever does agree to attempt any kind of outing, lockdown shielding permitting.

So many things to worry about, eh?

Meanwhile, I am still working from home and am likely to continue to do so indefinitely, until after Christmas at least - for now, the university is focusing on researchers and any teaching that can't be done remotely; administrative staff will be the last to return to campus. Since lockdown, I've been working on our very elderly team laptop which is still running Windows 8 and is beginning to creak (but is still in better health than my personal laptop, which is truly on its last legs), but have had a shiny new device procured for me, which should be arriving tomorrow. Sometime over the summer, I will be allowed to visit the office for one day only (actually, more like for one half hour only) to collect some bits and pieces like my chair and monitor, to help with home office set up, now that we are digging in for the long haul.

I remain in such two minds over working from home. On the one hand, I really love my new 10-second commute, I've gained about 2 hours a day just from that. I love the flexibility of working from home and I love being able to take tea breaks in my garden, either just to sit and read or to do some maintenance and planting out, etc. I've identified at least 13 different species of bee and five or six different kinds of butterfly in the garden this summer, which I would never have had the chance to see before, because I was so rarely in my garden during the day and there was always so much to get done in the evenings. So in that sense, working from home is great. But on the other hand, I find it really disconnected, it can be really hard to focus, and the isolation is quite hard, after working in a building with 200 other people for 11 years. I miss the casual social interactions each day used to bring and the general awareness of what was going on around the department, which occasional virtual meetings simply can't replace.

So, there are pros and cons, I guess.

I've rambled on long enough. How is everyone else coping with it all?

Hello, chaps, how are we all doing? This year is going great so far, isn't it – not. And we haven't even reached the Ides of March yet! Sheesh.

It's been a while since I updated, so I can't even remember what I've noted here and what I haven't. I don't even know where to begin!

( Very long update is behind the cut )

It’s been a while since I updated this journal – and it seems like all I ever blog about these days is family stuff, so I’ll just give a brief update on that and then move onto other subjects.

The main family news is that my Big Sis and her Hub brought their children home to live two weeks ago today, and they are now in the process of bonding as a family. It hasn’t been without its ups and downs, as you’d expect. The children have had disrupted little lives, Miss E in particular, so understanding that this is forever will take a lot of time and patience, while forming a true familial bond is something that can’t be rushed but rather will grow gradually over time. They’ve all had colds. Little G came out in spots and is now on antibiotic for a bacterial infection. Miss E is quite jealous of Sis’s time and attention and has started talking about past trauma beyond what was noted in her file – and has proved to be obsessively tidy in a way that is also indicative of past trauma. The smaller of the two dogs has become very protective and keeps stressing herself out trying to watch over both children at the same time, which is aggravating her epilepsy. But on the whole they are doing okay, still cocooned within the bonding bubble that is required of the first few weeks together as a family.

As for me, I think I’m only now beginning to fully understand just how stressed and depressed I’ve been all this year – well, for longer than that, really – with everything that’s been going on. I won’t go into any of the more personal ins and outs, but one effect of this is that I haven’t been able to do a lot of the things I usually do to relax, like write or attempt any other creative endeavour. No matter how much I want to work on a project, my brain just won’t do it – keeps shorting out from worrying about too many things, it’s a struggle to focus on anything, never mind attempt to be creative.

So I’m trying to be really gentle with myself and not place any demands on myself at all. I’m letting all my creative projects just sit and percolate – they’ll still be there waiting, when I feel better.

Instead, I’m doing a lot of comfort-TV-watching. If the brain doesn’t want to do anything, take it off the hook for a while! Gentleman Jack and Good Omens have been two new shows that I really enjoyed this year, although I have mostly retreated into the comfort of re-watches.

But I think I must be beginning to feel at least a little bit better, because I’m getting quite excited about the new Star Trek: Picard show, which is due to air for international viewers on 24 January on Amazon Prime – and it feels like an age since I felt this sort of enthusiasm for anything, so this has come as quite a relief.

I wasn’t expecting it – I certainly didn’t feel like this when Discovery came out. I didn’t even attempt to watch that until two seasons had already aired, although I’ve seen it now and enjoyed it, for the most part, while agreeing with those critics who’ve suggested that making it a prequel didn’t do it any favours. Picard, though – TNG was the Star Trek of my youth. I grew up watching it. As a teen, I collected tie-in novels with my pocket money (still have one or two favourites I couldn’t quite bear to part with when I got rid of the rest to free up shelf space). I followed TNG, DS9 and Voyager from start to finish, when they were on TV, although I never took to Enterprise.

I hadn’t given the franchise much thought for years, though, once it went off the air. Doctor Who was my thing – I started collecting DVDs of the Classic series almost as soon as they started to be released, back when it was the only Doctor Who that existed, no ‘classic’ about it, because the reboot hadn’t happened yet. With Star Trek, I was content to let it be a thing I’d enjoyed at the time but then moved on from when it was over. I looked at the DVDs from time to time over the years but didn’t want them quite enough to justify the investment. I caught random episodes now and then in re-runs on cable, but that was it.

Then I treated myself to a Netflix subscription last Christmas as a pick-me-up. And Netflix has all seasons of Star Trek ever – including Discovery, which was when I finally got around to watching that. After a while, I started dipping in and out of both TNG and Voyager to refresh my memory of those – and I picked those two as the least serialised, so that it wouldn’t matter if I was only watching the odd episode now and then, and it wouldn’t matter how long it took to get through all the seasons or even if I never made it very far at all, there was no pressure, it was just for fun. Comfort viewing of the kind I’ve been craving all year, safe and cosy and nostalgic.

But then this new Picard series started to be talked about, and casting details started to come out, and snippets of information about characters and plot. And I got interested, and then more interested, and started to wonder if it would be possible to get through all seven seasons of TNG before it airs, rather than going into it relying on 20-30-year-old memories – and actually found that target motivating rather than intimidating, which I am taking as a good sign.

Comic-Con panels and trailers back in the summer and again this week have provided more snippets of information about what to expect, including returning cast members from TNG (and Voyager) and first sight of the new crew, who are very much not TNG 2.0 – this is, it is clear, going to be a very different kind of show, with very notable undertones of Firefly, ragtag team of misfits on a totally unauthorised mission, which has got my interest well and truly piqued. And with all that, my TNG re-watch kind of stepped up still another gear almost without my noticing, while Voyager pretty much fell by the wayside – even though a character from Voyager is going to be in the new show, with important backstory that would probably be useful to bone up on. Only so many spare hours in a week, after all.

I’m halfway through season four now, so I might make it! Seasons one and two were a bit of a slog, but seasons three and four are excellent, I'd forgotten how much! And I'm having lots of fannish thoughts, and following all new information that becomes available, trying to piece together as much as I can from what has been released, and it really does feel like forever since I felt this enthused and interested in anything new, so I'm really hoping this is the start of being able to pull out of the doldrums at last. I've found in the past that when I can't be creative, writing analytically about something that interests me is a good way of keeping the brain ticking over in the meantime, but haven't even managed that this year - so beginning to at least think analytically, piecing together available information for a new show to try to figure out what to expect from it, that's got to be a good start, no? And maybe, in time, the rest will come...

WELL WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT after all that stress and angst (see yesterday's post), the Singapore panellist went and emailed a bunch of updated paperwork to the ADM last night, from Singapore, and the ADM has said YES!

I now have two nieces and a nephew :)

(I'm still angry about the delay and fat-phobia though. And I still think the system needs a radical overhaul. But I no longer want to burn the agency down!)

The weekend before last I was in Coventry for my brother-in-law's ordination - we made a full weekend of it with lots of sightseeing and a tour of Cadbury World while we were there.

And now this weekend coming is to feature a trek all the way up to Yorkshire for 'Family & Friends Adoption Training', although given that we've had an adoptive family member for more than 20 years now, I'm not sure what they are going to teach us, beyond perhaps everything we've been doing wrong all this time! But with D&R's final adoption panel so close now, every little bit of support helps.

They had a meeting last weekend with the kiddies's current foster carer - the respite carer who has had them full time for about 2-3 weeks, that is, since their long-term pre-adoption placement blew up. The meeting itself went well enough, the foster carer seemed lovely, and a bunch of dates were agreed for various steps in the process, but on the downside, she brought along her own social worker, who has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the adoption, yet kept interfering - and not in a helpful way. Such as trying to insist that both children absolutely must sleep in the same bedroom as D&R for at least 6 months after they move in, because that's what they are used to in their foster placement...which is an emergency placement that they have only been in for 2-3 weeks, and in which the fact that the carer could only have them in cots in her own bedroom was seen as a negative that nearly led to them being placed elsewhere. So why is this cramped short-term measure being trumpeted as the ideal? Your guess is as good as mine. D&R's own social worker will fight their corner on that point - the children already have beautiful bedrooms of their own all set up and ready for them to move into.

The arrangements for the transition also proved a sticky point. The foster carer has an 11-year-old of her own plus a long-term foster child of about the same age, and kept bleating about how very attached they have become to the children (who, again, have only been with them full time for 2-3 weeks, and it turns out they'd only had them for respite care a couple of times before that, so this isn't exactly a long-term attachment). So the foster carer's social worker is insisting that her own children have to be part of the transition process, which is planned over two weeks - first week D&R spend every day in the foster carer's house, slowly taking over all parenting duties, then the second week the foster carer is supposed to bring the children to them every day, and stay in the background while they parent the children in their own home. This is the sticking point. It turns out that a) the foster carer doesn't drive, so wants D&R to collect her each day (she lives 40 minutes away), and b) she wants to bring her own children to D&R's house every day to be part of the transition. Which is really inappropriate for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is that a couple of pre-teens are not going to have the maturity to step back and allow someone else to do all the parenting of a pair of cute toddlers they are used to playing with and helping with. We suspect that the real reason the foster carer is making such a point of all this is that it will be school holidays and she doesn't have childcare.

And then there's the fact that the foster family live in Huddersfield - the same city the children are being removed from, and where D&R have been told never to take them in case of being recognised by the birth family - heck, those girls could be in school with members of the birth family, for all we know. And...one of the pre-adoption play dates being arranged for D&R with the children is in a soft play centre in Huddersfield...where their older siblings (who've been placed separately with a family member) could well be taken during the school holidays.

I suppose the real issue is that the foster carer has never done an adoption handover before, she only agreed to be part of all this as an emergency measure, and she is finding it all quite weird and hard.

It just all feels like such a minefield, and really highlights how different the rules are for foster care versus adoption. D&R have been given such a strict list of rules to abide by - down to not taking the children on holiday for a particular length of time, so that they will feel secure in their new home, not introducing them to new family members for a particular length of time and then how to go about those introductions, heck, even the initial slow, steady transition to their own care - whereas those same children, while still in the foster care system, even when they are on the verge of being adopted, can be moved to a new placement with a complete stranger at a moment's notice, their foster carer can introduce them to whoever they want, take them on holiday whenever they want, and no one bats an eyelid.

Honestly can't wait to get these kids out of the system and into a loving and stable family.

The final paperwork has been submitted. The intention is to keep their forenames and give them new middle names, as Yorkshire recommends not changing the names of adopted children - this can differ wildly between different local authorities. But if the names need to be changed for security reasons, those prospective new names have also been chosen and submitted. (I actually kind of hope they do end up changing the names, as it is quite an identifiable combination, but if not I daresay we'll learn to live with them!)

Still to come: farewell contact for the children with various members of their birth family, with whom letterbox contact will be maintained; an observation 'bump into' meeting for D&R with the children followed by play dates; pre-adoption medicals for the children; and then the adoption panel on 12 August!

So my older sister and her husband have been going through the adoption process for something like a year or more already, with various hurdles to overcome and setbacks along the way

They received the go-ahead yesterday to move forward with the matching process for a sibling group of a little girl and boy, aged two and one!

Of course, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems, so at the same time they were given this news, they also learned that although they still have several weeks worth of red tape ahead of them before they can begin the introduction-and-moving-in process, the children’s current foster carer (who has had them since the little boy was born) needs them to be removed from her care within a week, due to a crisis in her own family

But wouldn’t it be terribly unsettling for the children to be placed with a second temporary carer, before being transplanted again within a matter of weeks to their forever home? Why yes. Wouldn’t it be simpler to instead speed up the whole process and allow D&R to take them immediately, as a foster placement, for which they are fully trained, while the adoption process grinds along? Well, you would think so. Will this actually happen? Your guess is as good as mine. There are three separate social workers in the mix, all of whom have different opinions on the best course of action, some of them based on the best interests of the children and others based on the strictest possible interpretation of the rules, regardless of the needs of the children.

But whether this week, next week, or two months from now, it is almost certain that this little girl and boy will become my new niece and nephew! I can’t wait to meet them!

Forty years ago today, my lovely cousin was born with only one kidney, which didn’t work. He wouldn’t last six months, the doctors said. But he proved them all wrong. He fought and he fought for his life. He lived through hundreds of procedures and dozens of surgeries, including not one but three kidney transplants. He spent 25 years of his life on dialysis. He never stopped fighting, and he never let his illness get him down. He was the sweetest, funniest, cheekiest soul you could ever hope to meet.

And after all that, it was cancer that took him from us, in the end, just last summer, only days after the 10th anniversary of his successful kidney transplant.

Today would have been his 40th birthday, and what a celebration it should have been. He so nearly made it.

Miss you today, Gav.

In which I am not actually going to discuss the state of the nation, because that would be depressing beyond words and might lead to me spitting nails at the world in general, so perhaps this post would be better titled 'the state of my life in 2018', but that doesn't sound as good.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I made a resolve to be better at blogging here but have so far failed miserably, so as the end of the year is fast approaching I thought I'd try to put together a round-up of my year, for my own sake as much as anything else. I haven't talked about a lot of this stuff online as it was happening, but I think I need to get it out and recorded coherently, for my own reference. Feel free to read or ignore as the mood strikes you

( This is likely to get long, so I'll put it behind a cut! )

So that's been my year. A lot of stress and worry, and a spot of gardening.

Deb & Ray went back to Yorkshire today, very reluctantly and full of promises to drive all the way down again next weekend – which remains to be seen, it's a long way to come just for a weekend.

My cousin Gavin's death has hit us all pretty hard. We were together such a lot as children. Robert is the only one of my mum's three brothers to have children, so we were the only cousins on that side of the family – Jason is six months older than me and Gavin was three months older than my brother, so we were all really close in age and spent a lot of time together, growing up. We'd go on family outings together, we had Jason to stay with us whenever Gavin was in hospital (which was a lot), and then when Gavin was well, he'd come and stay with us, because he felt he was missing out, and also because it allowed Jason to have a bit of quality time with his parents, who were so often preoccupied with his brother. So, we were pretty closely bonded, as cousins, from an early age – here's a picture of my Grampy holding baby Gavin and Simon, and then in front left to right that's me, Deb and Jason.


And for reference, here's my mum with Robert, wearing identical goofy smiles. Mum always says that her very first memory is her father waking her up to tell her Bob had been born; she was two years old at the time.


Gavin was ill for a large percentage of his life. He was born with non-functional kidneys, and his parents were told not to expect him to live longer than six months, maybe a year if they were lucky – but he soon proved to have an indomitable will to live. He fought and fought for his life, no matter what – and he went through a hell of a lot, so many treatments and procedures and surgeries, I don't think anyone managed to keep count of them all. Gavin never gave in and he never stopped smiling. He loved life and he made the most of it. I don't remember ever hearing him complain, despite everything that he went through, and I never heard him say a bad word about anyone, ever. All his experience taught him was to make the best of all situations; I wish I was better at following that example.

This is the five of us kids on the beach at Barry Island in 1984:

Me at the back with Simon and Gavin; you'd never guess there was only three months between them, no? Gavin was always tiny, a result of his illness.

Gavin had two kidney transplants as a child, the first failed almost immediately, but the second gave him five years of relative freedom before it gave out; he was 12 at the time, and refused to allow his name to go back on the transplant register for more than 15 years. He knew that he could only have three transplants and wanted to wait until medical technology had improved because if he had that third transplant and it failed, that would be it, for the rest of his life. So he waited. And the whole family was tested, to see if any of us could be a donor for him, but none of us was a match.

The third transplant finally came in July 2008 – I posted about it at the time, here. It's kind of painful now to look back at that post and remember how anxious and hopeful we were at the time, knowing that it was his last, best chance of living a normal life. But it worked! It did give him that normal life he'd always craved…if only for ten years, as it turns out. After being tied to dialysis three times a week, at last he was free, and he made the most of it.

That transplant came at about the same time I had just moved into my mum and dad's old house, and for a while there we talked about Gavin taking one of the spare rooms to be my housemate – looking back now, I really wish that we'd gone through with it, we'd have had so much fun together, but at the time I think we were both a little shy of taking that step, Gavin had never lived away from home before and I was already used to being on my own, plus the room needed a fair bit of work before I'd be happy for anyone to use it, so we hesitated, and then Gavin's council flat came through and the moment was gone. It would have been fun to share, but we both liked our own space – and Gavin always did relish his independence. One of the memories we've been sharing as a family this week was a time when Gavin and three of his wheelchair-bound friends disappeared from their residential school and sent everyone into a flat panic searching for them – they were eventually found almost two miles away at Penarth Pier, enormously proud of themselves for having got there all by themselves!

All three of those friends have gone on before Gavin, thanks to the nature of their conditions, and I know he mourned them deeply. Well, they are reunited now – and hopefully getting up to all kinds of mischief together again, in the afterlife!

That transplant gave Gavin a new lease of life and he lived it to the full. He loved driving and he loved exploring. He loved cooking, now that he was free to eat what he liked after a lifetime of dietary restrictions, and he loved buying silly little gadgets to use in the kitchen. He loved children, perhaps all the more so because he knew he was unlikely to ever have any of his own – he visited regularly after Layla was born, and bought her some beautiful toys that she still enjoys playing with today. He loved spending time with his family, came to every birthday party and every Christmas gathering and took great pride in throwing birthdays parties of his own, now that he had his own place – I have so many happy memories of those occasions, in particular when our Nan and Great-Aunt Marge would start nattering away being unintentionally hilarious and Gavin would catch my eye with an amused little half-smile that said, 'You know it's funny and I know it's funny, but we don't have to let them know we're laughing.' He loved driving to the airport just to sit and watch the planes landing and taking off – I went with him one evening last summer, and we parked up and just sat there in the car for a couple of hours, chatting, never dreaming that it would be the last time we did anything like that together; his cancer recurred not long afterward.

Gavin was first diagnosed with cancer in March of last year – I posted about it at the time, here. He underwent treatment, which appeared to be successful…for a time. But the cancer recurred, and spread, and eventually overwhelmed.

In March of last year I wrote, 'After going through so much, it would be too cruel if cancer took him now.' I feel the same way now that it has.

July 18th was the 10th anniversary of Gavin's successful kidney transplant. It should have been a celebration. Two days after that anniversary, on Friday the 20th, he had an appointment at Velindre Cancer Centre and was told that nothing more could be done for him. "I'm so tired," he told his dad on the way home. It's as if, after fighting so hard all his life, once he was finally given that terminal diagnosis, he gave himself permission to rest. He died less than 36 hours later, just before midnight on the Saturday. Uncle Bob came round to tell us on the Sunday afternoon, with his brother Nigel, and the moment they came into the house, we knew - what other reason could there be for the two of them to visit together on a random Sunday in July? It came as such a shock, in the end, which seems funny to say about a person who had been ill for so much of his life, but in the end not one of us saw it coming, despite how poorly we knew him to be.

Last Thursday, Deb and Ray arrived from Yorkshire for the funeral, which Ray had been asked to take, in his official capacity as a minister. That evening, the family had booked a viewing at the funeral home, which is just around the corner from my mum and dad's house, so everyone descended on them for the evening – we ended up with 18 people scattered around the house and garden, sharing memories. A pre-funeral wake, as it were. An evening of remembrance and bonding that went on until quite late into the night.

Among the mourners, Gavin's little cousin Annalise, from his mum's side of the family – bless her, she is getting married next week, and Gavin was supposed to be the best man. Death interrupts the best laid plans. She brought with her her little boy Anthony, who is almost two, and he spent the evening playing with Layla-May in the garden. They alone had no idea what was going on, and Gavin would have got a real kick out of seeing them together like that.

The funeral was on Friday. It was hard. I think the hardest part was seeing Jason sobbing freely throughout, just barely holding it together to give his eulogy, so here's a picture of the brothers together, with Jason's daughter Maraid, not long before Gavin died:


Son. Brother. Uncle. Grandson. Nephew. Cousin. Godfather. Friend. My cousin Gavin was a truly lovely person: funny, cheeky, sweet and loving. Every day he lived was a gift that I am grateful for, but I am very greedy because I wanted more. He will be missed forever.

One of the questions we are grappling with right now, as a family, is this: how do you explain death to a two-year-old?

Because Layla-May's other grandmother is dying. Brain tumour. She was given four weeks to live, over a month ago now, so it literally could be any day now.

And here's the thing. Prior to her diagnosis, Layla-May barely even knew she had a Nanny C. She'd seen her twice in 18 months, and one of those was an accidental encounter in a shop. Heck, she barely even sees her father - once a month, if she's lucky - never mind his family. So her Nanny C was not a feature of her life until two months ago, when she was diagnosed, and J started spending more time at home with his parents (he lives these days in Cwmbran with his girlfriend, and relies on her for transport everywhere), and decided this was a good opportunity for contact with his daughter. And also, in fairness to him, wanted his mum to see his daughter, while she still could.

That was in May. Layla was taken to see her dad at his parents' house three times in about five weeks - she hasn't been there now for nearly three weeks (J hasn't asked, we would try to accommodate him if he did). But those three visits were enough. She now recognises the route and if we drive in anything approaching the same direction, she asks if she is going to see Nanny C.

And it isn't even as if C is a particularly warm or affectionate grandmother, she isn't - she wasn't before she was ill, and she certainly isn't now...but she is unwell, and during those three visits Layla was very aware that she is unwell, and she is a very empathetic child, always has been. So now she keeps asking after her. "Is Nanny C all right? She's very poorly, she can't walk very well. Is someone helping her? Is she lonely? Nanny C has a baddy head. She needs a cold flannel..." and so on, and so on. (At two years of age, Layla firmly believes in the restorative power of a cold flannel.)

It is kind of heartbreaking. Two months ago, Layla didn't know she had a Nanny C, and now she does know she has a Nanny C but is about to lose her, and is worried about her - and will probably never see her again now, C is past the point of being able to cope with toddler visitors even if J was still at the house with her.

And pretty soon, we are going to have to explain the concept of death to a two-year-old.