Time

It has been made clear to me this week just how fleeting time is. As another month races to it’s conclusion, I discovered I lost a week without really knowing where it went or indeed that my blog had not been updated either but more importantly a few more people who are close to me have woken up with the realisation that someone they love has left this earth. What do you say to someone that now has to live with this development which for all of us is the inevitable?

As I have mentioned previously there are some wounds that time does not heal, it may dim the hollowness that is left behind, perhaps for a fleeting moment, or you may even go days without remembering but grief is a fickle emotion and can creep up on you when you least expect it.

I have been privileged to meet a number of elderly people and one thing always strikes a cord with me and to some it may seem a small thing but to me it always speaks volumes. It’s not something they say or even something they do, but more something that they do not do.

Walking through a front door I notice the usual coats and hats, but propped up against the door or hanging on the back of a hook will be a stick that will no longer be used, a hat that once sat upon the head of the husband of the lady I am there to visit. But that husband has been gone for many years and yet it is as if they are still there. When I look at these small things it makes me smile. Because I can see the moments when they put them there before returning to their loved ones. I can see  the woman who to them was beautiful get the twinkle back in their eyes the moment they start talking about “their chap”. I see all those years which have passed disintegrate the wrinkles of age and shatter into nothing. What remains is a multitude of treasured memories, the good, the bad and the love that winds through them like a thread holding them altogether, grasped tightly by those left behind.

Photographs and memories may appear to be all that remains, but it is not all. The emotions that go with each and every one of them linger and in a way that person lives on within everyone they ever touched, everyone they ever had a moment with, be it a laugh, a cry, a smile. Time may be fleeting and cut short all too soon but memories and feelings endure for an eternity. Grief is inevitable just as much as death because it means that person touched you in some way however small, do not be afraid of it, but do not forget to hold tightly to that thread for someday it will guide you back home and you can remember them and smile.