Going Underground

The other day I bumped into a school mum who I had't seen for a while.
We had a quick chat and a catch up on our families and then she apologized for not being around recently.

Apparently, as she put it, they had gone 'underground'
In other words....her husband's younger brother, who was only 40, had died due to a heart attack and it had caused quite a shock to their system so they hid away and concentrated on their family for a while whilst they came to grips with life.
They had reassessed their life, their work, their family time and what their family stood for and where they were going. They had spent some quality family time together too.

I gave her a huge hug and told her she never had to apologize for stuff like that. It happens to everyone now and then, ok some people don't go underground with it, but I sometimes think more people should.

You hear of people getting themselves so stressed out trying to do it all, when in reality if they had just taken a deep breath and said 'no' for a little while then they would have got through still smiling!

So where have I been for the last 6-8 weeks......?
Underground of course!

I got a little stressed out after my operation and things just weren't running smoothly adding on top of that we got told my husband's heart condition was worse than we thought and that he would require surgery sometime in the next 12 months!
By the way, we are talking the big type of surgery here, not your namby pamby stuff, the big kahuna open the chest and stick your hands in for several hours type surgery! The one that takes you months to recover from.

He is fine, at present, he has no symptoms and all the tests, whilst showing that yes he has a heart condition that will require intensive surgery at some stage, show that he is doing ok and we don't need to panic.
So after going underground and reassessing our own family life, we are now back on top, feeling our way slowly upwards and feeling like we can breath again.

Oh and did I tell you there is threat of his job disappearing in July too!

So life goes on and we just breath slowly in and out and take little steps forward.
By the way....how are you?