A bit of a rough time

February's been crazy for us. Even crazier than we thought possible. The added element was my father-in-law was diagnosed in late January with end-stage cancer. David rushed back in early February to say good bye one last time, at that stage his dad was in good spirits and had no pain. Alas that was all to change quickly in the last week and he passed away on early Thursday morning.

Part of the Bangkok airport, 9.30 at night.

If you've been reading here, you'll know that I was in Bangkok at the time at a training workshop. David was in Tokyo alone with the boys. Thankfully we've both had caring people around us to support us through and we're coping okay.


Thursday was a rush of figuring out details. Especially travel details. Facebook Messenger is somewhat controversial, but I am so thankful for it (and free wifi); it allowed our families to communicate as freely as was possible with us in three different countries. David's family were able to set a funeral date taking David's travel into consideration and he didn't need to rush straight back to Australia. Indeed he chose to wait a few days so that he could see me before he left. 

These orchids at the airport were tiny, about
an inch or so.

I flew back overnight on Friday, landing just after 6am and got through immigration and customs very quickly, Narita Airport was very quiet. Next stop was a coffee shop to fortify me for my journey home, but I arrived 10 minutes before they opened. Thankfully nearby there was a vacant large square shaped seating area. It's a first for me: lying down outside a coffee shop waiting for it to open! I sat in the coffee shop for about an hour before I felt able to carry on to catch trains across Tokyo (two hours worth of journeying).

I arrived home just after 10am. Absolutely exhausted: I only got an hour of sleep twice during the night. I went up to bed pretty quickly and found I was shaking from exhaustion. It wasn't till mid-afternoon that I felt a little bit functional. I've never had jet-lag but I know that it must be compounded by sheer travel-fatigue. Especially when you've flown overnight.

The fuel that helped me get back home from the airport on
nearly no sleep. I was so exhausted and on the verge of
nausea that it took a long time to eat that delicious cinnamon
roll. I didn't even finish it!

David doesn't fly until tomorrow night (Monday). I'm thankful we have been able to have a couple of days of "normality" with the five of us home. Today is only the fifth day of all of us being in Tokyo all day since Feb 5th!

So, I have one more week of single parenting. I think I might set up a big visible countdown! After next Sunday we have no more planned overseas trips, nothing at all, not even planned trips for any of us (separately) within Japan. I'm looking forward to sinking back into "normal life".