Here it is the 12^th day of April 2013 and it is raining outside…..when does it not ever rain here in England? For now I am just going to think that all these raindrops are “tears” from heaven.

We lost Rolands mum, Nidia, on the 8^th at age 84, and this just added to the ever mounting sadness that the first part of April brings to this family. Two years ago on the 9^th we lost our daughter and on the 12^th we lost my step-dad. So it has been very trying to say the least.

I sit and wonder about Nidia………and why I felt like she did not like me at all……it didn’t matter what I did to try and please her, it just didn’t seem to be enough……..she burned many bridges with me in the short 3 years that I knew her……oh I did love her…..she was my mum after all and the only one I thought I could talk to when I couldn’t talk to my own mom in the USA…….but she would never understand or talk to me in a way that a mother talks to a daughter and for that I am sad……was it because I was American? Or was it something else, maybe a dark secret that kept her from letting me into her world? I was told that I was not the only one who she would not let in…….she treated Rolands first wife with about the same contempt that she treated me with……I only wish that we could have gotten to know each other a little better as I am sure there would have been many good stories to tell….about her family, her childhood…..but she was not one to open up and say to much at all about her past life……unless it was to boast about how many accomplishments she had done in her life and maybe it was to make her feel like she was superior to other women…….I guess we will never know now.

I am sure she was a good mum, although there is another woman who cared for Roland and his siblings, and to me she is the best….she was there to pick them up when they fell, kiss the boo-boos better, and tuck them into bed at night……this woman was Caroline Gingell…….she is 88 years young now and I am so looking forward to the day when I can go to the West country and meet her…….she has already told me she will tell me all the exploits of the naughty boys, although she says she probably made them act that way…….she sounds like a character!!!!!

All I can say is Nidia has definitely left a void in some lives……and I hope Roland will have no regrets for not being able to go see her before she passed……..she will always be loved no matter what she did to me…..I just wish that she had realized what she was throwing away when she turned her back on me!!!!!

There is some happiness to the month of April……My son was born on the 22^nd, a grandson on the 24^th, and great grand daughter on the 25^th………our rainbows at the end of a long storm!!!!!!

Till next time from the Duskweald……….