Bitter Sweet

3 years ago hubby and I were on holiday in Mauritius celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. It was our last full day there before we headed to Dubai for a few nights - we'd actually celebrate our anniversay in Dubai.
We found a message at our rental house asking us to phone my brother - obviously the alarm bells were ringing, but I didn't for one moment think it would be the worst of news, that my mum had died suddenly the day before. What with time differences and him somehow having problems reaching us on our mobiles it had taken a while for him to contact us.

So now our wedding anniversary is always a bitter-sweet time for us, with such happy and sad memories vying for space.
When I think back to that holiday, the memories are bitter-sweet, it's such a lovely place and we had such a wonderful time both in Mauritius and Dubai, but there's always the remembrance of receiving such horrible news mixed in. In some ways there was no better way to hear such bad news. The house we'd rented was at Trou aux Biches right on the shore, with a long garden going down to the beach. I sat for hours looking out to sea and thinking about what had happened. Being by the sea has always soothed me and I'm grateful that I was there, in a beautiful place at one of the worst times in my life.

I thought I'd post some of our photos from that trip as my thoughts have been wandering over to that house on the beach this last few days.

This one on the left is special as it was sitting here in the spot the photo is taken from that I last spoke to my mum, trying to desciribe this beautiful view from here in the Casela Bird Park. Thank goodness for mobile phones because I can remember how pleased she was that I'd rung from so far away and how happy she sounded as I was telling her about the wonderful colours, the mountains and the lovely gardens, plus of course the birds and animals we'd been seeing and the lovely lunch we'd just had - this last one especially made her laugh, because the restaurant had been very busy and rather than turn us away they'd taken a little table out onto the grass, not far from where the photo was taken and served us our meal there, and how we probably had the best seats - with a feast for the eyes as well as the tummy!