30 December 2018 - Parua Bay, Whangarei Harbour, Northland

We moved back out on to our section yesterday and were set up within a couple of hours; awning out, electric cords laid out in readiness for the generator, et cetera. We even erected our brand new gazebo on a flattish mown spot behind the motorhome, although my ever practical husband insisted it come down again before nightfall; who knew what winds could stir in the night. This was very disappointing because I had visions of a semi-permanent shelter from the sun, an ever ready outdoor lounge. Still the regular erection and dissembling will offer some form of exercise. Speaking of which, as I write this, Chris is outside with his newly serviced weed-whacker trimming the tall dandelions that grow on the clay bank directly beneath our steps.

This morning I enjoyed the rosellas and tuis, and late yesterday while sipping my glass of wine in the gazebo, a pair of wood pigeons across my view of the bay and far below,  paddle boarders and sailors bobbled about the calm waters.

My father expired mid-morning on Sunday 16^th December, my mother, younger sister and I at the side of his bed, generously provided by the local Hospice. Outside the sun shone on the pohutukawas in full bloom along the riverside, pennants waving in the gentle breeze from the mast tops in the marina and within the first floor, his life finally fading before  us. A chaos of emotions had raged inside me over the preceding weeks, most to do with the resentment of having to do so much all so foreign to my experience, and yet when the time came, I was so very glad to have been there through it all.

We buried him four days later after hasty but super-efficient funeral arrangements were made by email and telephone, a task made more complicated by the fact the plot awaiting his body, and that of my mother when her time comes, is in Pio Pio over 350 kilometres to the south. Fortunately my brother-in-law was willing to carry out Dad’s wish and take the casket down in the back of his car; fortunate too is it that modern SUVs are getting bigger each year. 

Less fortunate was the panic when we discovered the plot was officially not in the Bevege name and that the title had never been formally changed when my third cousins gifted it to my parents. It was by mere chance I recalled a visit I made some years ago to one of their progeny and still had the telephone number in my phone, and they in turn were able to advise contact details of a sibling who “might” recall the transaction. It was fortunate too that the funeral directors, and apparently the County Council, were willing to accept an email from this distant cousin recounting the gift enough to cover their backs against future eventualities. 

So finally everything came together and as I stood on the hillside above the Mokau River, here not much more than a creek, I recalled standing beside my father early this year on this very site, murmuring my appreciation of the view he would have when his ghost rose up early in the morning, the best time for an old shepherd to be out and about. Poignantly a bugler played the last post from higher on the hill, on a World War I bugle my father found in a second hand shop in London thirty years or so ago, and gave to the said bugler on the condition he play it at his funeral. Alas the piper had already passed, so there had been no processional  lament as grandchildren carried his coffin up from the hearse.

Christmas came and went with little to mark it but a few hours spent at my mother’s late in the afternoon cooking dinner for her and my very supportive husband, and now just two weeks after his passing, my mother must learn that life can be lonely and unfair, but she was lucky to have the years she did with my father, almost sixty seven of them and all of which she recalls in a positive manner. How many can say that?

We spent seven and a half weeks at the Whangarei Central Holiday Park, and the Park was almost full when we pulled out yesterday morning. It had served us well, as had those who work away meeting the needs of the travelling public, the berry farm workers backpacking their way around this beautiful country of ours and the semi-permanent caravan dwellers of which we were two for longer than expected. (More correctly it was my husband and the motorhome who remained at the Park while I spent most of my days and nights in the apartment beside the river, popping back to have the occasional dinner with my husband when the carers came to support my mother)

Our own travelling and tikki-touring about will recommence as soon as my sister returns from her boating holiday and returns to work, thus available to pop in to check on our recently widowed mother, a task that remains for now our own. But our spells away will be shorter or at least within a day or two’s drive from Whangarei.  

Tomorrow will see the last of 2018; who knows what 2019 will bring? Hopefully we can start making plans; there are challenges ahead and alas, few of them of the travel variety. But then perhaps this blog will become more of a diary than a travel account. May the New Year bring us all (you included) good health and contentment with our lot.

2 December 2018 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

It’s almost two months since I returned to New Zealand with matters other than travel filling my days. I flew into Auckland on 7 October, exactly four weeks earlier than our original itinerary, leaving my husband to follow en schedule.  My father lay in hospital having been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour, and the family was still struggling to accept this shocking news. Had my intrepid father, fast approaching his 90^th birthday, not stumbled on his way back from the library and been carted off to A&E to be stitched up, we may have been none the wiser until matters had progressed another month or so. We sisters gathered at the bedside to support my shattered mother, groping for some sort of direction. While death was always going to be on the future agenda, the reality is always a surprise. I have mouthed these words in sympathy to clients, friends and family over the decades; this time I was to heed them myself.

The reality is that almost two months on; my father is still with us, the centre of attention and care demands, but with us all the same. We gather about his bed, the restrictions of which are very recent, and reminisce and fuss and adapt our own schedules. My mother clutches at the limited intimacy left between her and her husband of almost sixty six years. Carers and Hospice nurses, all with hearts of gold and years of practical experience surround us with support as we grope our way through this journey, one we have not taken before.

I spent the first four weeks staying with my parents in their beautiful apartment beside the Hatea River, enjoying the view down over the marina and Loop Walk, watching the hundreds of walkers and runners who take advantage of this wonderful feature of Whangarei’s Town Basin. 

One day we ventured forth, my mother and I on either side of my father tottering along on his walker, across the Canopy Bridge and along as far as the Hunterwasser folly. We managed to shuffle him to the top of the viewpoint, hoping to observe the progress on the Hunterwasser  Gallery. High security fences precluded this but we were buoyed by the fact we had succeeded with the outing, accepting this is far from the intrepid adventures these two elderly folk have enjoyed in the not too distant past; rafting down the Clarence River, bungee jumping off the Kawarau Bridge, 4WD safaris across the South Island high country, circumnavigation of these southern islands we call home, and so much more. How life is diminished at such times.

I met up with a few of my friends, all of whose lives have been complete and busy in my absence, and continue to be so. I was glad they could find time to accommodate my erratic schedule. I walked the Loop myself on several occasions and would still be doing so these days if my husband had not brought back a gift on his own arrival a month ago. 

It is not the first time either of us has contracted a ‘flu like bug on an international flight, and I was very thankful that I had avoided doing so on my way back in early October. I had found my mother’s own health much depleted on arrival, and while this was due to poor medication management of her chronic condition, it took most of that live-in month to restore her to normality. Had I arrived with a bug of my own, I may have caused her early death. As it was, Chris came down within a few days of arrival with a nasty cold, which he duly passed on to me and my own dicky chest. What a pathetic lot we are! 

Our children and grandchildren have not been entirely ignored since our return; we spent a couple of days with our Waihi Beach family after picking up the motorhome and getting it road-ready again. Chris and I settled back into our motorhome, relearning where our possessions are stowed and relearning routines, different from those in our caravan in the UK. We parked up in the Whangarei Central Holiday Park and have been here for a month now, joining the other permanent and semi-permanent occupants. Although we have no intention of settling here for good, its proximity to my parents’ dwelling serves us well. We can respond within ten minutes to a call for help and have done so on several occasions. It is also an easy distance if I had the stamina to make the twenty five minute walk; hopefully I will manage this soon.

One Sunday we popped down to West Auckland to collect our trailer and to catch up with our grandsons, their mother and our son and his new partner; rearranged family situations since we left in early May. We drove back up the west coast road through Helensville to Wellsford before continuing on up Highway One, a route we have not taken for several years and one which could be done in a more leisurely fashion in the motorhome, perhaps pausing or overnighting at Port Albert or the Atiu Creek Regional Park.

Today we took our Whangarei granddaughters to see the remake of The Grinch, probably appreciating it more than these reserved young ladies. We delivered them home to their parents who were clearing their overgrown garden; here in Whangarei the native vegetation thrives in the humidity, the sunshine and frequent rain.

And back in the UK our Sorrento remains unsold, the lack of active marketing the problem rather than price; I am sure we will end up almost giving it away, as we did with the caravan. However we did have three years of fabulous travel and regret nothing.