Well today seems a poignant day to write this blog. Today is Jason’s birthday, the first birthday he hasn’t seen after passing away last year, he is 42 today.
On Saturday night (21/06) a group of us completed the Moonlight Memories walk around Southsea/Old Portsmouth to raise money for The Rowans Hospice. It is a 6 or a 12 mile walk (we did 6 miles – there was a reason we weren’t just being lazy!) through part of the night starting at 11pm.
My friend’s husband Jason, sadly passed away at The Rowan’s Hospice in December last year. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour in early December 2013 and was moved to The Rowan’s Hospice shortly afterwards; where he spent his last 4 days very peacefully with his family surrounding him before he passed away on 15th December 2013.
The Rowan’s really are an amazing charity, and will do anything they can to help. There was nothing that Jason, his family or friends wanted for in the time he was there, they accommodated his wife and daughter to stay with him over night and even made up a room for his sister who flew over from Canada to be with her brother. They also provide bereavement care after death and everything in between.
The Rowan’s Hospice is an amazing place and I could waffle on for pages, but if you would like to know more please visit their website – www.therowanshospice.co.uk
The Rowan’s survives almost entirely on donations from the general public to provide their essential services and this costs them a whopping £11,000 a day, so to give something back we took part in the walk to raise some funds for them. Now we aren’t lazy, we would have liked to have done the 12 miles, but we have a few challenges among us including; rheumatoid arthritis, an enthusiastic young one who should be in bed and my very short legs! So we plumped for 6 miles.
There was 6 of us altogether, my friend Trina, her daughter and my god daughter Shannon, Trina’s mum Jill and Trina’s two sisters Chantelle and Sarah and little old me. I was very ill Saturday afternoon with some kind of tummy bug/touch of food poisoning and there was quite a while on Saturday when I was as a white as a sheet and didn’t think I was going to be able to make it. Somehow I managed to take enough anti sickness tablets and immodium to manage a few hours sleep and go out for the walk!
We donned our Jason T-shirts and hats and went for it. All in all we had a lovely night, we stopped at Portsmouth Cathedral to write down a memory of Jason to stick to their wall and light a candle of remembrance for him.
Sarah and Chantelle shook their hats at every passer by and gained an extra £45 worth of donations on the night, and despite being young and getting very tired, Shannon did amazingly, she took it all in her stride and completed the 6 miles with hardly any complaint.
We completed the walk in around 2 and a half hours, including our toilet stops, Cathedral stop and hassling poor unsuspecting people of Portsmouth stops. Once finished we de-registered and collected our bacon buttys and cups of tea and waited for our lift home after having raised nearly £1200.
So that is it, another event over with for the year. It is an amazing event and I would suggest everyone gives it a go, this was their 7th year of running it. It is an amazing charity to raise funds for and this year they had just under 1000 entrants, but they are hoping to have raised just over £95,000.
We are still collecting donations and if you would like to sponsor us or could spare some money for a donation we would be eternally grateful, even if it is £1 - every little helps!
Here is our just giving website - https://www.justgiving.com/JasonsWobblyWanderers/you can also sponsor us by sending a text to 70070 typing the code JHWW72 and £(amount you wish to pledge) in the body of the text (I believe they then add it to your phone bill) or I am collecting cash with a sponsor form.
Thank you to all our sponsors near and far – you are every bit amazing. Jason – we did this for you (even though you would wonder why we were wasting valuable drinking time!) you are so dearly missed and your lovely wife and beautiful daughter you have left behind are just so amazingly strong.
Rest in peace Jas, much love, Sammy xx
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