It’s taken me a few weeks to write this because grief is heavy, but here we go.

We went to Scotland for a week at the end of August, this was partly to just get away and give us some time to grieve but also to acknowledge our 10 year wedding anniversary. Before Lenny had died we thought that we’d throw a big party, but obviously everything has changed now. Still, to ignore the fact that we have been married for 10 years would be even more sad to add to all the sad.

First of all, the pictures are really not a true representation of how we felt most of the time! We look happy?,

We packed the van up with all the gear, bikes, walking stuff, camping stuff and both dogs. We drove up to Loch Tay, to a very special place to us. Where we’ve had many happy holidays – it would have been Lenny’s first holiday location, he would love it as much as we do. This made the visit to Loch Tay really challenging, we sat around for most of the day crying, but managed a little walk by the river with the dogs.

The next day we left loch Tay to head to Inverness, I wanted a proper walk, so in the usual Moy style we went for a chilled Munro (Scottish mountain over 3000ft) called Schiehallion, supposedly one of the easiest Munro’s, but was some tricky rock waling on the top, but we made it, no one was on the top, we were in the clouds! I remember that this was the first time I felt some good and the possibility of hope since Bhai died, we were up and down in just over 3 hours. The mountains are a special place for our family. I know that the boys would enjoy them as much as we do!

We booked a ‘fancy’ place west of inverness. it was really pretty and also had a wood fired hot tub. (which I’ve now decided is a complete necessity for our garden, (my next building project!) We had 5 days up there and it was a time!, it was manageable and we focused on our grief, which brought a whole mix of emotions. We had to make some changes about our personal boundaries and focus. The time up here has made us realise we needed to focus on ourselves and ask the question ‘who are we doing this for?’ if the answer is not for our family, then we’re not going to do it. its a matter of survival! – this change in priority focus has really helped since our return.

For the rest of the week, we cycled and walked on the beach, ate some tasty food, talked about the boys and grieved. This is how we continue!

Our anniversary was acknowledged! Thank you SCOTLAND!!