Hello everyone,
For obvious reasons it has been some time since I last posted but felt I should say something now that the third month anniversary of Supatra's passing is upon us. It is hard to believe that she is gone and that it now has been 3 months. The horror of her decline over the last 48 hours of her life still haunt us and we continue to relive those hours almost everyday. It is a loss like no other and I still don't know how I will be able to cope without her chattering, without her funny dancing and without her yelling at Jason to watch her do something silly.
A lot has happened since my last post like moving the family from the UK back to Canada. This in itself was an emotional challenge as I felt that moving so soon after Supatra's death that we were abandoning her. We had our own special ceremonies in the hopes that her spirit would follow us to Canada and her new home which she did not get to see. We arrived in Canada on 16 July and spent about 3 weeks in a hotel until all our belongings arrived. We are now in what I call our temporary home on a Canadian Forces base until such time we can save up some money to purchase a home. We had deliberately chosen to stay on the base because of Supatra's and Punny's need for support that we had already worked to set-up in anticipation of our original move date of 25 Jun 12. That need all but disappeared after Supatra passed but we had to stay with the accommodations we had arranged. In the end I think it is working out for the better as Jason's nursery is only about 100m from our house and Punny still gets to use the support services on the base. We both struggle day by day but Punny has been hit the hardest especially as her all day morning sickness kicked in. That's right for those that may not know, Punny is pregnant and we are hoping for a baby girl! :) We discussed having another child shortly after Supatra was diagnosed but never acted on it. We also discussed it with Supatra because at one point we wanted to have another child in time for Supatra to meet her new sibling and Supatra was always keen to have a sister anyways. But in the end we knew it would be too much to bear, especially for Punny, knowing that things might get much harder. After starting Supatra on her Burzynski treatment we knew that the burden would be way too much and that it would just be one more thing taking our focus away from our priority, which was Supatra. Punny and soon to be baby are doing fine and the expected due date is 26 March 2013!! Only three days out from Supatra's birthdate of 29 March. At one point we thought it would be really special if we were to have a baby girl born on the exact same day but after thinking about it we would rather that did not happen. We feel that if our baby was born on the same day it would never be just about her special day but there would always be a sad cloud hanging over her special day.
The morning sickness that Punny is experiencing is the worst of her three pregnancies and combined with the fresh loss of Supatra, our move to a city where we have no connections to, plus missing all our wonderful community of friends in the UK has really made this a difficult last 6 weeks. Punny is starting to feel somewhat better but is still very tired, depressed and feeling the sickness for the time being. But day by day she is getting stronger and getting around more.
On top of the move and me missing the first 1.5 weeks of my French language course for various reasons I got into an accident with my car after having it on the road for only three weeks and just spending $1,500 on repairs. I was OK but some guy was not paying attention to the red light I was stopped at and hit me from behind. I thought the car would be repaired but the insurance company felt it was a right-off and so for a week instead of studying I was researching for a new vehicle and running around getting paperwork sorted out. In the end we bought a used minivan but we are out about $5,000! :( It has just been one thing after another and I hope that is the last problem we will have to deal with for some time.
I continue to think about a way forward for doing something special for Supatra so that her name and spirit will be remembered. I know our good friends in Milton are still moving forward with plans to create a sitting area near the Milton community centre and a "Supatra's Fairy Walk" at the Milton Country Park. My language studies are taking a priority right now but I am also thinking of creating one or two annual charity events here in Ottawa. Maybe continuing the theme 'Supatra's Big Night Out' evening event and a 'Supatra Fairy Walk' on the anniversary of her passing. The fairy walk would be good to develop into a family event that would see kids dress as fairies and walk for a set distance and have some entertainment at the finish/start line. We also may have an opportunity to create a tranquil garden space in honour of Supatra at the local Buddhist temple which has a large undeveloped property. But these are all long term plans/projects and I will have to see if I can make them work.
Thank you to everyone for your continued support and trying to help us get through our grief. I should also mention that Natalie Gunner is going to run the Brighton Marathon to help raise money for Brain Tumour UK which is supporting us in earmarking all funds raised in Supatra's name towards DIPG research projects. I will try to get a link to Natalie's fundraising page in the coming days.
Here's the link to Nat's fundraising page!
https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/nataliegunner1
All the best
Supatra's Dad
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