The calm before the mourn

Wow, it’s been an eventful couple of weeks. The kind that exhausts you from the weight of the emotional experience. I’ll get to that at the end of this. With regards to the blog, I’ve decided that posting these fortnightly is more manageable than trying to post content for the sake of it. I think it maintains its purpose of being a body of work that I can look back on in the future and see the progress I’ve made, and the times it’s been a struggle.

The first thing I want to talk about is the new appreciation I have for the career changers that are completing the Command Shift bootcamp while working a job with unsocial hours. Or, don’t have the opportunity to work from home. In my day job, I work from home unless I physically need to be somewhere else. This was one of those times. My company has its annual team conference coming up and they needed some video pre-records completed at our head office. So, when the first bootcamp lecture of the week came around I was feeling pretty tired. This may sound dramatic but it’s incredible how much effort it takes to change your routine for day trips into the office. It’s infrequent and now it’s in the rearview mirror. I’m not going to romanticise learning to code because it’s difficult. However, I did find it soothing to write code and debug things.

This post also signifies the end of the first learning module of the course. We’ve officially concluded ten weeks of getting to grips with the building blocks of code. In that time, we’ve learned how to do npm installs, we’ve learned how to use GitHub to manage our code version history and we’ve grown to use the Command Line to a point where it's ingrained in our muscle memory. I keep saying we, but I should be saying me. I find it amazing how we’ve been able to cram so much in and how our progress is becoming obvious. We’ve gone from learning HTML and CSS to JavaScript basics, Test Driven-Development and Object Oriented Programming. I need to do more work on TDD but I’m confident my skills will improve in this area with repetition. I’m sure there’s probably something I’ve missed but the time has gone by in a flash. While I'm sad to say goodbye to my first crop of tutors, I am excited to be starting backend in a couple of weeks. To cap off the first section of the bootcamp, I had a productive one-to-one with Jenny to talk about coding and my progress so far. I've been a lot more content since then and it's helped me concentrate on what I'm doing.

And, finally. Yes, this is called ‘My Bootcamp Diary’ but that doesn’t stop it from being influenced by outside factors. I’m feeling nervous and anxious about writing this next part but it’s important in the larger scope of my blog. This time last Sunday I was on my way home from King’s Lynn. Earlier that day, my mum received a text from her brother saying that this might be the last opportunity we have to say goodbye to my nan. She’d been in a care home for a little while and when I saw her before Christmas, she was witty as ever, quick on her feet and her beaming smile was infectious. However, during the holidays she had a fall that required surgery. This was to be the beginning of the end. At 96 years old, the chance of a full recovery was slim. The surgery went well, but complications followed and she deteriorated quickly. Once my mum had received the message, it was a no-brainer for me. I got in the car and took my mum with me from Cambridge to King’s Lynn. It was heartbreaking to see my once fiercely independent grandmother, looking so frail and delicate. She was in pain and she’d gone off her food. During my visit, it was getting too much for me at one point so I kissed my nan on the forehead and said goodbye while I held her hand. As I made my way towards the nurse's station in the adjacent corridor, I heard my mum tell my nan that I was heading off. I should note that my nan only opened her eyes for a split second and couldn’t communicate beyond simple head notions. Anyway, my nan could still hear and when she listened to what my mum had said, she shook her head as if to say ‘no’. Who am I to deny the wishes of a dying person? I turned back around and sat at her bedside, and I spoke to her like I had done whenever I visited her under normal circumstances. For example, I wonder what the lyrics to ‘Return to Sender’ by Elvis would be nowadays. After a while, she was given some heavy painkillers and nodded off to sleep. Surrounded by relatives and friends, I ended up saying two heart-wrenching goodbyes before heading back to Cambridge in tears. That would be the last time I ever saw her. The following day was a struggle, I mentioned the weight of the emotional experience earlier, that’s what I mean. I attended my bootcamp lecture the following Monday evening and I was in no mood for general chit-chat and pleasantries. I turned my camera and mic off and took part that way. Four days later my nan died. At her age, death is not unexpected but yet it remains something that you cannot prepare for. I am feeling the void she’s left. I may not be crying that much now but I am overwhelmed with sadness. My nan was a fighter, she was funny and she was kind-hearted. She lived a life filled with love and humour, and her absence will not go unnoticed. Goodnight nanny, rest in peace.