It's Really Not Doom and Gloom!: 24 years young!

How did that happen? Surely I'm not old enough to have a 24 year old?! Even he's feeling his age. His main concern today was that he's not going to be able to tick the 16 - 25 age box on forms for much longer!!

On a more serious note though, I discovered today how much Harrison values people acknowledging his birthday just by a simple message. He's not after lavish gifts, just a simple 'happy birthday' means the absolute world to him. He's really feeling isolated now (day 668 of shielding) and said that it didn't feel like his birthday because we've not been able to celebrate properly for the past 2 years. He thought that reading his Facebook birthday messages would cheer him up a bit. However, I wasn't planning to post to let people know that it was his birthday. So when he looked, nobody had posted on his timeline. I'm so glad that he told me that he was going to check Facebook otherwise I'd still be none the wiser and he'd have been upset all day but wouldn't have said why. I felt dreadful, so I posted in the hope that a few people would notice and would maybe leave him a birthday greeting.

I have the most amazing friends! Harrison ended up with over 60 messages, not only on my Facebook post but also sent directly to him. When he saw the messages beginning to flood in, he visibly lit up and started beaming. His day was further improved with phone and FaceTime calls with four family members and then to top it off, he thrashed Bernard and me in a family Wii session! I won't mention that I accidentally won the bowling match (he wasn't impressed about that!) but I more than made up for that faux pas by not scoring a single point in our basketball game! I had absolutely no idea how to pass the ball or score but didn't mind one bit.

As we sat and chatted on his bed this evening, Harrison said that he'd had a lovely day after all but would have liked to have been able to go to a restaurant. I was so grateful to my lovely friends who helped to make him feel special.

Here's a record of Harrison's day in photos: