March is always a difficult time – No: The most difficult time. Very much in the vein of Four Weddings and a Funeral it manages to encapsulate both birthdays and bereavements for our family.
Are blog posts always meant to be happy? Are they meant to leave one with a sense of fulfilment and achievement, or is there room for a sprinkling of sadness – A sadness that seeps in unexpectedly to dim the light for a few moments?
Life isn’t happy. Yes – there is lots of opportunity for happiness in both the small things and the big. The first cup of tea of a morning, the unexpected hug from a child, the rare example of courteous driving. All of these small happenings can leave an inner glow more satisfying in a way than the Big Bang days like weddings and birthdays. But there is lots to make us unhappy. The monotony of the school run and household chores, the little annoyances like running out of cornflakes or standing on that piece of missing Lego – and then there are the big sadnesses.
For me the biggest has to be the loss of some thing irreplaceable and as ‘things’ aren’t irreplaceable I mean specifically the loss of people and animals. One minute they’re there and the next they’re not. That’s it. They’re like footprints in the sand after the tide has wreaked it’s havoc – only alive and kept living in our memories.
Of course time is a great healer, in the sense that with passing hours our memory is dimmed. It comes to the point that we have difficulty in visualising, even in our minds eye, what once was so important to us.
I don’t want to forget. The pain may be raw, but better the sadness from happy memories. Life does indeed move on, but there should always be time to pause awhile and remember.
Jenny O'Brien HQ 