Thoughts from a funeral

I am fascinated by my ever-changing relationship with death. It is not something that greatly influenced my life prior to my mother’s death nearly ten months ago, but it has been evolving into a more ingrained aspect of my consciousness, and quite simply an increasingly solid concept. I know now, in a way I never fully wanted or needed to accept before, that any one of the people that I love may irreversibly disappear without warning. I don’t fear death, although I worry about the consequences of my own death on those I love. I seldom bring myself to imagine how their loss would change me, and my life’s journey, but the unimagined become nightmares and phantoms…

Analysing a Moment

Simplifying the translation of our emotions assists us in cutting through the cluttered confusion of our hearts, and forming a coherent picture to place ourselves in. Nuances are inevitably lost in any translation, however, and on some occasions it seems worth turning away temporarily from the lure of simplicity and letting the uncertain dusk of fragmentation reign.

Watching my eldest son perform in an Early Years Mother’s Day assembly at school recently brought unexpected tears to my eyes. There is something utterly charming about the sweet, high-pitched voices of a group of young children singing their hearts out, proud and slightly shy, vulnerably independent. It was a moment in which I felt my stomach twist with the joyful pain of parenting, and it was only as I began to write about it that I began wondering where this deep reaction came from, and what it contained within it. It was so much more than the simple sweetness I first interpreted it as.

Gratitude

I wrote this last night but fell asleep before I had a chance to post it…

I have a friend and fellow blogger who periodically makes delightful lists of things she feels thankful for. On days like today, when I have a pounding headache and an underlying edginess, I often try to distract myself with small snippets of happiness, and I thought this an excellent day to write a list of my own:

I am grateful for…

The way the sunshine on this mild winter’s day makes my skin glow happily.

Trusting my sense of direction enough to wander happily through unknown, beautiful London streets after I got off at a different station on a whim this morning, until I finally found a bus that could get me to work.

The colourful, hand-painted necklace from Bangladesh that bounces merrily on my chest today, reminding me with a smile of the friend who gave it to me, who is boldly adventuring in South America.