What a Year (So Far)

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2020 is going to be one of those years I'll just never forget. We've had Coronavirus and been in lockdown for weeks. What with stockpilers of toilet rolls and idiots who decided lockdown wasn't for them and held parties and BBQs I'm beginning to think humans have gone completely insane. And then, the day before Adam's birthday my mother died. We had to have a very strange funeral with nobody apart from me, Adam, my sister, my brother in law and my nephew. There were no flowers and we had to follow 6' behind Mum's coffin to ensure we were at a safe distance from the pall bearers. Then we had a bit of light relief when we celebrated VE Day here in the UK. It was the day that the Germans finally decided that they'd had enough and threw in the towel in Europe, although of course, there was still fighting going on in the East against the Japanese. We had a sort of a mini street party. A man up the road got some large speakers out and played World War 2 songs so that the whole street could hear and our next door neighbour but one put his BBQ in the gutter and cooked burgers for us and the family opposite. Of course, we had to have a system. He cooked the burgers and put them in bread rolls, popped them onto a table then moved away until the 'burger eater' had picked up the plate and moved away. And now, less than a week before my birthday, today we have had to have our gorgeous little Dusky - our cat - put to sleep. She had cancer and we were keeping the pain under control with medicine but yesterday we noticed it had spread to her eye and so she was blind in one eye. And then this morning she didn't seem to know where she was and was very disorientated so we had to make that horrible decision to take her to the vet. Again, very strange as we had to hand her over to the vet as we weren't allowed in due to social distancing. The vet came out to tell us that she was now no longer in pain and to let us know that her ashes would be ready for collection in a couple of weeks or so. They're very understanding. I asked how much we owed them and he said that we could phone through in a few days' time and pay as it was bad enough that we'd had to part with a member of our family. And now I have the horrible job of slowly clearing away all Dusky's things. The odd thing is that our other cat, Ollie, seemed to know that I was upset as, this afternoon, he came into the lounge, leapt onto my lap and went to sleep. Usually during the summer he pops in for a quick bite during the afternoon and then disappears out again. I'm certain he knew. We want to adopt another cat, of course (we go through heartbreak when we lose one but something tells us that there are others out there that need homes) but, of course, due to lockdown we can't visit the RSPCA centre but I'm hoping that it won't be too long before we can save another little life.