It pops up each year on my Facebook reminders. I am glad it does, reminds me out of the darkness things do go on. Since this was written, I have 2 grandchildren and my brother has gained another grandchild, Annabelle. Sure he is watching down.

It is Remembrance Sunday tomorrow… a day to think of others and their losses during the wars around the world.

9/11/14

In my own cack handed way I am just about getting through all the crap that is being thrown at our family, sometimes finding dark humour in it, other times not really happening to me… you know, feels like it is happening to someone else.

Last night at the bonfire people who knew were lovely, they didn’t know what to say, so said the right thing that they were sorry. I said it was fine, what I wanted to say was…. ‘well by the way, my sister in law, my brothers wife (who we buried 2 weeks ago) is going in hospital in less than 2 weeks for a 5 hours op to deal with her brain tumour and actually while I am typing this my sister is sat by the bed of her lifelong closest friend who will die any day from ovarian cancer’ and she is heartbroken and I can’t help. Like everyone in these situations you hope that the ‘wave’ will come over you in private so you can wail like a banshee at the sadness and injustice of it and it usually does. Today the wave hit me at Junction 27, like a torrent that made my whole body ache with the pain. What got through that glitch was remembering it was remembrance Sunday and thinking of the absolutely raw grief of all those who lost whole families in the war, young boys who didn’t come back. Some days I want to turn the clock back, you know when my mum, dad, Tony, Gran and my brother are still here, my boys are young and I see them everyday and life is ‘normal’. But we can’t have that life goes on and changes, so all of you out there who still have a parent living, your siblings living, your children living… remember, it will not be for ever and every single minute is precious beyond words. I am just about to write a eulogy for a funeral I am delivering next week, someone I have never met. I have though met their family and felt their pain, just another family going through the same. It is all around us.