26th January 2018. Worst Australia Day ever

I can hardly see the screen at the moment.  Today was such a wonderful celebration of Anne’s life.  She had already been cremated, so today was the memorial service (all details as previously planned by Anne, no surprise there).

I stayed in my room as late as I could, had breakfast around 9am, and luckily check out isn’t until midday, so Par and Lottie will arrive not too long after that.  I got ready and checked out a tad before noon, then sat in the lobby quietly reading, waiting for them and trying to avoid thinking about what is coming up.

There was a not too long ceremony outside, overlooking the water.  I was so proud of both Karin and Lottie, to be able to get up and make a speech.

Afterwards we went indoors (at the same place) for a bit of a gathering.  There were speeches (I think I was really glad I couldn’t understand them, I would have cried even more), small nibbles (not sure Anne would have liked the single use plastics being used :) and drinks.

I was always introduced as “Anne’s big sister from Australia”, which made my heart happy. And I lost count of the times someone heard me speak English and come over and say: You must be (or Are you) Anne’s Australian sister? When I nodded or said yes, it was always followed by, “She spoke about you so much, she loved you very much” which just made me cry harder, to be honest as nice as it was to hear.  Both Anne and I knew what we had was special, and I’m pretty sure if the shoe was on the other foot, friends of mine would be comforting Anne as we obviously both talked about each other a lot :)

After the service, Lottie, Par and I had dinner and I could finally talk about Anne without my throat catching and bursting into tears.  It was so nice to talk to them about her and be able to...and to remember the funny things.....  Like how between us we broke the dial pad on the phone in my bedroom since Anne was always the one arranging the social outings, and I wasn’t afraid to dial out either... we were pretty proud of breaking a phone :)

About 8.30pm we called it a night though - it had been a draining day, and as Lottie put it, prior to today, we had today to aim for - and as horrible as the reason for the reunion - we had that.  From now though, is the new normal. Learning to live without as much light in the world....

I got the 9.15pm Flygbussarna back to Arlanda and checked in no problem to the hotel.