A Heartbreaking Update | Saying Goodbye To My Mum & Lotte 💔

Hi everyone, it's Jeanette here, Enthusiastic Gardener, and I'm going to try and do this in one take because then I don't have to say it twice. We've had some very very sad news which I need to share with you and I've been putting it off basically because I just couldn't bring myself to tell you all but you have given me such wonderful messages after my last video which was the video which I shared that mum had come to live with us. So yes, mum came to live with us because she'd suffered two strokes, one in November and one in February, and so she she came to live with us. You gave me such encouraging messages, oh honestly, and so many of you are caregivers as well it seems and it's not an easy job and but like you all said you wouldn't swap it for anything. But unfortunately the first of my sad pieces of news is that mum actually passed away at the end of April. She had a third stroke, a big massive stroke which she just didn't regain consciousness from and she sadly passed away about 36 hours later. So that happened at the end of April but I must tell you it's like it's like um funny because I took the day off work, it was a Thursday and I usually work on a Thursday but I take it the day off work so I was with her that day which is just strange how things happen and it was beautiful sunshine all day long. Mum funnily enough again seemed to have done everything one last time. She'd seen our wonderful family from Jersey, they'd come over maybe a month before, she'd done that and seen them again had a wonderful time and they were here. Another thing she did was she went to the theatre with all her friends, I took her, dropped her off, she had lunch first and I met my friend for a coffee and then we all went to the theatre so she's got to see all her friends. Another thing that happened which was wonderful is her side of the family she has a younger brother and a grandniece who lives in Wales, she'd come over for the day and we'd all had another get together that was literally one week beforehand so we had a wonderful day she got to see them she got to see her great-grandson for the day as well another day and also we went on the Tuesday before she died we went down to her bungalow because we would go in there every now and then to pick things up and bring them here and so she got to see her bungalow but she did love her bungalow she just couldn't really cope on her own or we wouldn't or I wouldn't have been happy you know worrying about her all the time so that's why we wanted her to move here but she did love her bungalow because dad actually built that bungalow so you can imagine what a hold it had on her and us as well and so she got to see the bungalow one more time the other thing while we were there she used to live in a big house and what happened was they divided part of the garden and got it officially separated and dad built the bungalow on the the extra piece of land so she had lived in the big house and we went that day and knocked on the door of the neighbours who've now lived there 20 years and they showed us around so she got to see that house as well one more time anyway going back i'd taken the day off work we went to the hairdressers in the afternoon oh she'd had her last occupational therapy visit and the occupational therapist said to me jeanette you have got to let your mum do more you're i'm like a helicopter daughter like oh let me do that for you mom let me do this let me do that she said she can do things on her own she can pop off to the letterbox and so we were laughing i said i know i know mom mom you know i must let you do more and so when the occupational therapist left that lunchtime i said right mom you could make your own sandwich today so she did she made herself a sandwich and we were laughing about that then we had a hairdresser's appointment because she was started going for a weekly wash and blow dry which she was quite enjoying that so i was at the hairdressers before and um because i was having more done and she was just hers was only going to be half an hour so richard dropped her off you know part way through mine she came in we were sitting in the next seat smiling at each other mum seemed to be smiling all that day she had her hair done i phoned richard i said richard can you uh come get mum because i didn't want her to have to sit and wait in reception for me for an hour so he came and got mum and he said to me that um on the way home she was saying to richard i'm getting quite used to this you know having my hair done every week she was very very happy that day and then she said to richard i fancy doing a bit of sweeping in the garden so bearing in mind what the occupational therapist had said let her do these things richard said right there you go there's your broom and so she was in the garden beautiful day she loved the garden and that's where it happened she just um had her a stroke in the garden and and i got home and uh we called the ambulance he just never regained consciousness so my sister and i were at the hospital and she sadly passed away but she had a lovely last day she was happy here i used to keep saying to her mum are you are you happy here are you glad you've made it oh yes so it only turned out to be about 10 weeks in here but i'm just so glad and we had the funeral about 10 days ago and it was beautiful we had all the music that we loved we had a lovely photo tribute on the screens to somewhere by matt munro beautiful and it went through from when she was born all loads of pictures of her with dad because dad died in 21 and i never actually said anything at the time when dad died i did do youtube then but i never mentioned it but i think when dad died i just threw myself into looking after mom because that's my way of coping my way of coping is to be practical sometimes means you don't deal with your feelings that's the only trouble with that but it's just me that's just how i am so i threw myself into looking after mom and that's what i did for the next five years did try and get her to move around here but it all fell through a bungalow right next door she was going to move into it but her buyer dropped out at the last minute and to be honest she wasn't ready to move around here then because at that time she was still driving and popping into romford meeting friends for lunch she used to be a yoga teacher and um for 40 years so she had so many friends honestly so many really really good friends but anyway she didn't move in then and uh it's funny because as i said i don't think i've properly grieved for dad and now i seem to be doing that as well well i hope that it's true what they say we will never know i hope that they're together now if they are they'll be so happy they've known each other since they were i don't know 18 or something like anyway so mom has passed away and then six days later the second thing is not he not he passed away within six days and uh so mom died on the saturday and then i went to work on tuesday which was too soon really and i was literally there for an hour and my boss said go home to that i was no use to anyone my head my body was there but my head was just elsewhere go home you know so i came home and lottie richard was a gold i think and lottie just threw up as soon as i got home well i didn't think much of it because dogs do that dogs do throw up and they do have off days and they do like not eat for a day or so but i think because my mind was so into the my goodness my mom's just died she wasn't lottie wasn't my top priority and then she didn't eat anything that day the next day wednesday i took the day off work she wasn't eating then but she was going for walks and she was like interested in her surroundings and everything so you know she thought oh she's going to stop her food by the thursday i thought this isn't right and um i was opening tins of sardines all the most exciting things to try and entice her she didn't want that and then i made her boiled eggs mashed up boiled eggs she didn't want tonight and i just thought to myself that thursday night she was sleeping so much she was 13 and a half by the way so she was an old girl bless her she was adorable but um yeah i thought to myself i've got to take her to the vets tomorrow because i don't work on fridays i think i'd gone to work on thursday and i thought i've got to take her to the vets um tomorrow which was friday because the following monday which was my next day off is a bank holiday and if i don't do it tomorrow the friday it's going to be another whole week so i took her emergency appointment they left her there and they called me in the afternoon and they said we've done blood tests and lottie is her levels for liver and things like that has just sky high she's got liver disease and they mentioned one level alt it should be i wrote this down it should be between 10 and 125 hers was 4000 and then there was another one called alp and that should be between 23 and 200 and she was 1900 so i had the phone on speaker and richard was sitting there and she said well we can do more tests we can keep her comfortable we can monitor her more there are things we can do richard and i were looking at each other going we've always said to ourselves well there's a vet here called the super vet he's on television and noel fits patrick and he i remember he said to a family on one of the episodes you're keeping your dog alive for you and i thought oh i'm always going to remember that and uh yeah i must i must never do that i mean it's different if a dog breaks its leg obviously you pay the vet's bills and do things like that but for something like an illness just to keep them alive for a bit longer we didn't agree with that everyone has their own opinions anyway richard and i were just shaking our heads i said to the vet we need to say goodbye and she straight away she said i think so that day which was six days later after mama died the vets that afternoon and say goodbye to our lovely little lottie and funnily enough i imagine this big sort of greeting and we'd be cuddling and all that but you could tell she just had enough she was even interested in us she's like turning her head so we had to say goodbye and lots of people said to me lottie's gone to be with your mom and it made me smile because i know that it's kindness and kind kind thoughts people say that but i have to say they didn't much care for each other to be quite honest mum wasn't the dog person and she would like oh hello lottie and lottie just off and go off and lay down somewhere else so oh gosh that's so hard losing the two things that i spent all my time caring for and then all in one fell swoop they've gone because even before mum lived here i would always all my days off be backwards and forwards down to to see mum take her anywhere she wanted to go shopping or whatever so all of a sudden it's all stopped and i the kind of thing that i would liken it to is like i suppose if parents their children move away and you get emptiness syndrome well that's what i have emptiness syndrome richard has been amazing my friends and family have been amazing and mum was so well loved she was so well loved and no one would ever say a bad word about my mum and my mum would never ever ever judge anyone or say a bad word about them so you couldn't have a nicer person so it's um adjusting now and it's strange because the house seems empty but we we've kind of gained our freedom back because obviously with the dog you can't just go off to london for the day and all things like that which i'm used to back because we had lottie and lucy in 13 years and then when mum came it was suddenly we can't leave anyway i think you know what i'm saying i'm rambling now so anyway i just wanted to give you an update because you've been so wonderfully supportive and you gave me such wonderful messages after my last video and then i'm starting to get some questions um or just checking in if you're okay and i don't want to put on the comments on my last video that i need to do a proper video really to tell you so that's what's happened and some of you i have told because we have each other's mobile numbers and you know you've messaged me directly or if anyone sent me a message on like directly on facebook messenger or something i've told you and i wanted to update you so that's what's been happening i have been in the garden i have a feeling that the day mum died i had to go to the dentist and on the way back i hopped into the garden center and i bought myself four alstroemerias because i decided i needed four alstroemerias so that i bought those the day mum died mum did see them obviously i hadn't planted them so i've planted those they're beginning well they'll be flowering soon i've also bought a ceanothus i've planted that i've planted beautiful geum around my pond which is called mrs bradshaw which is exactly the look that i was hoping for and the bees love it i've planted my window box which has red geraniums or pelargoniums i've put some osteospermum in as well and i tidied up my pond a lot moved a few bits around i've put my little waterfall there now which looks nice i think i've been doing a lot of weeding and i just think it's very very therapeutic and it's lovely to be in the garden but there's still more weeding to do but i'm getting there and i might do some in a moment my schneebitchen rose my beautiful white rose schneebitchen stands for or means snow white in german that's blooming i have my other and yeah that's it really i just wanted to give you another day it's been very difficult i'm very up and down and it's moments just come over you don't they out of the blue in fact the other day i will tell you this quickly i was watching i i love watching chateau diy which is on channel four i love anything to do with anyone renovating a chateau for some reason i love it i watch them all and on youtube as well chateau diaries escape to the dream and escape to rural france love it so many of them so anyway i was watching an episode of chateau diy which mum and i i used to take there and we would sit down she loved those as well and i thought to myself right i'll just finish watching this and then i'll give no so it's little things like that anyone who's lost their parents or anyone dear you know exactly what i mean and if you are looking after elderly parents or looking after anyone who needs your care you are wonderful because it's not easy as much as you want the person to be with you and come and live with you it's still not easy as much as you love them it's it's not plain sailing and uh for them and you i think and if you have parents or anyone cherish them just cherish them because we never know we just never know what's around the so i'm going to leave you now and thank you for listening i don't think i'll be able to reply to comments but i will read every single comment it's just like upsetting having to reply to every comment and i don't mean to sound ungrateful please do leave me comments and i'll give you a little heart and when you see a little heart thank you so so much that's kind and thoughtful thank you for listening and bless you all and i will see you i don't know when i will see you it's all dependent when i feel like i need or want to do another project or but i don't want to just do videos of me which i'm sure there'll be something exciting june june tomorrow and we've got the what's it called the sagittarius blue moon which apparently is very rare and i went outside last night had to go out the front walk all the way down to see what the moon looked like and it actually was rather spectacular but that's supposed to bring if you believe in things like that which i don't know that i do but it's supposed to bring wonderful new things into your life so let's hope we all get wonderful new things in our lives lots of love i'm going take care bye