Friday 22nd April

After a long, long day, we’re safely home. Having awoken at 5:30am, showered, breakfasted, checked out, we walked to the airport terminal, only to realise some twenty minutes later that it was the wrong terminal. Ho hum.
So we find a bus that takes us to where we should be.
And join the queue to the baggage drop, and following that the queue to passport control, and then the queue to the departure gate, until finally we are safely boarded.
A short, smooth flight up the Bay of Biscay, across the North West corner of France, over the Channel Islands, and we’re back in Bristol in a little over two hours after leaving Lisbon.

Before we actually reach home, we drive in to see you.
This is the longest time we’ve been apart from you, and looking after your flowers at your resting place; but my sister, your auntie, has been to see you whilst we’ve been away.

Standing there, in the cool evening drizzle it seems as though nothing has changed, everything’s the same, you’re not here with us, your life ended too soon: we’ve been off on holiday, and you didn’t come with us.

Nothing’s changed.
Everything’s as it was.
Everything’s the same.

But everything has changed.
Nothing is as it was.
Our lives are not the same.

And tears fall.
This is not right.
Life is not fair.

I suppose the emotion of visiting your grave for the first time in fifteen days really affected us more than we thought it would.

We love you.
We miss you so much.
To the moon and back.
Sweet Angel son.

xxxxxxx