63rd Wedding Anniversary

This is a very special card for me. This is to celebrate my parents 63rd Anniversary. I want to also write a bit about my parents but will leave that to the end of the post. I will explain my card first then you can finish up if you like or you can stick around and share a bit of my life with me.

This card is a bit busy but it is exactly as I envisioned it.

Both images are from Mo's Digital Pencil and I love putting them together this way. First we have the elegance of the bride and groom dancing and having eyes for only each other.

Then 63 years later the same couple looking back at their start of married life. The old couple are just like my mum and dad except dad is the shorter one now, has only a shadow of hair left and is like a cuddly teddy bear (with a bit of a bad attitude some days) and mum is taller, never wears a tracksuit, is whip thin and elegance personified lol.

It doesn't though, cause the love they share is certainly what I see. They have reached a time in their lives that has them sharing many quiet times, looking with love at each other and just holding hands,(In between the sulking and bad moods with each other that is).They love looking at old photos and talking about the past so I think they will really love this.

I wanted to achieve the look of an older couple looking or thinking back to when they married and that is the image they see. I stamped the Anniversary and moved the numbers (chipboard painted with silver paint) around all over the card and decided on where they are.

When layering I decided on a slight silver background paper then used a circle stitched die to cut the image of the old couple and attached that with a little bit of dimensional foam to lift slightly.

All of course coloured with copics and a wee bit of blue shimmer gel pen around the blue ribbon on the wedding dress.

I would like to enter this at:

Try it on Tuesday: Letters and Numbers - The new challenge at Try it on Tuesdays

have both letters and numbers on the card.

The Paper Players: PP276: A theme Challenge from Joanne: Numbers

Craft your passion Challenge #293 - Always Anything Goes

Now for a little background for those interested in reading on:

Mum and dad are celebrating their 63rd wedding Anniversary at the end of this month. I know they won't see this post cause they don't know how to turn a computer on let alone type anything. The technology age of computers passed them by and they are happy with that. 

Dad is 90 next month and a big party is planned as its a wonderful way to get all the family together. Mum is 85.

Dad has dementia and over the last few years he has slowly been disappearing into the past. Now most conversations are around his days on the farm (as a boy) and the Airforce (2nd world war) and some imaged feats and adventures. He still knows us and can read and work the remote on the TV so he is happy (even when he keeps turning up the volume on the TV cause we are talking too much).

Dad loves to go for a coffee and loves to see us all but he's conversations go back to the past constantly. The more he cant understand whats being said, the more he goes back to the past but thats what his life is now. 

I grew up with the strictest dad you could imagine, got to know him better when I was working down the street from where he worked and found the man I love so much when he was there for me in my tough times. Now I sit and listen and work on being patient and listening as many times as he wants to tell it.

Mum has Alzheimer's and was diagnosed in May last year. Her type of Alzheimer's has effected her memory and vision. She now has holes in her vision which means she had to stop driving and even walking down the street can be a trial as she just cant see what we see. 

It was so fast moving that we were stunned. Mum went from being stressed and struggling to remember things but coping to not being able to read or write, remember how to turn the oven on, find things, understand things, be my and my brothers and sisters rock to someone who just didnt know where to turn or what to do. And was aware of what was happening. 

For dad it was slow and the need for help increased as time passed but to him nothing was changing. For mum she could see that she couldn't work it out, couldn't do it, couldn't do what she had always done. Mum ran 5 kms every morning, she surfed, she exercised, she cooked for large crowds, she read, she studied, she played scrabble, went to the pictures, she sewed for others running a very successful business till she was 72. She went to art galleries, travelled, my mum never stopped, even going shopping was like going for a jog as she kept a mean pace. The houses always spotless.

That all disappeared last May, mum is still here but now she is a shadow of herself. She has been on a medication that appeared to slow the effects down and actually gave back a little of what was lost for the last 6 months but things are slipping again now.

 She is such an amazing woman, had a hard childhood, and made our life wonderful being there for all of us. She was my listening board, helped me through the good and bad times, held me close when times looked like they couldn't get any worse and always always listened to my good news and bad news with equal love and compassion always had the right answer for me.

These times are gone and now I hold my mum and  dad and wish with all my heart they could find a cure. I want my mum  & dad back, but know that what I have is more than others, so I shouldn't be whinging.  I hate having to make the decisions for them, trying to get them to understand the most basic of concepts and seeing their gratitude as though I have done something unbelievable for them.

For all of you going through the same with your parents/grandparents, or having been through this I appreciate your having stuck with it and apologise for turning a beautiful post into a maudlin post. Really not the place for this post and I have reread a couple of times and thought of deleting but I think its worth leaving just in the fact that there are so many families going through this now and it might help someone somewhere to know they aren't alone. Take care XX

Thanks for coming to visit and I hope you come again soon.