Alex

This weekend we try again. If the weather doesn’t postpone the attempt once more my sons will be jumping out of a plane from over 10,000ft at around 120mph on Saturday.

I did try to instil some common sense into them as they grew. Honestly I did.

Nick-in-a-box

Trouble is, I also let them play with full grown wolves and tigers and jump off tower cranes. And drive fast cars and motorbikes…do aerobatics… mountainboarding…

Though ‘let’ is probably the wrong word…

So we are watching the weather forecast carefully, hoping there will not be a repeat of the gales.

I get to be their taxi driver. And I get to watch. With the camera.

Alex and the camel

My sons are jumping for charity. Nick had decided the jump would make a nice birthday treat for his brother and paid the deposit, but raising money for a good cause was a major part of the whole thing. Nick, as some readers will know, is facing more than ‘just’ a skydive with this jump as he will be arriving at the airfield in his wheelchair to ‘eat another elephant’. When he was attacked, when things looked very bad, we had so much support from people across the world… many complete strangers back then… and in so many ways. The messages we still have and they still touch the heart every time they are read. It makes a huge difference when you are living through hellish circumstances to know people actually care.

Nick

These events change the life not only of the person in the hospital bed, but also of their friends and families. You can imagine it… many of us will have thought to ourselves how we would feel in those circumstances. But actually, what you do feel is nothing like that… it is isolating, lonely and very, very frightening. When someone reaches out from the heart it matters. And sometimes it really is a simple as that, just caring can change the day for someone.

The charity my sons will be jumping for does just that… The Make a Wish Foundation reaches out to children facing life threatening conditions and makes a wish come true. To the child and their families that can make all the difference.

Nick and Alex 2009

Nick and Alex would like me to thank everyone who has sponsored them so far, your support means the world to them and to me. Please take a moment to read their story and see what they are doing and why, and if you can, please help by sharing their story, or sponsoring them either by Paypal to nickverron@hotmail.com, on the Do it for Charity website …or just leaving a word of encouragement for them on their Facebook event page.

Thank you.

Make-A-Wish Foundation® UK grants magical wishes to children and young people fighting life-threatening conditions. Since being established in the UK in 1986, they have granted more than 8,000 wishes.

There are 20,000 children and young people living in the UK with a life-threatening condition. And they want to grant a wish to every one of them.

This year they hope to grant 900 wishes and need to raise £7 million to continue granting wishes in the future.

Make-A-Wish is affiliated to Make-A-Wish Foundation® international – http://www.worldwish.org. It is now the largest wishgranting organisation in the world and helps to serve children in nearly 50 countries around the world through its 38 affiliate offices.