What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight...........

At 6.30 am – on a Sunday morning – as I lay warm and secure in bed trying to think of what I would want to do on this day of rest – I heard three sharp knocks on our front door. I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to want to stir but my wife told me that she heard the knocks too…a tacit request that I go and see who was at the door.

It was Bruno - her sister’s partner. Nina wanted to see her. Bruno looked serious and I was not clear headed enough to argue when he refused to come inside. Nina’s daughter had passed away at the hospital sometime during the early Sunday morning. It was a car accident that happened the evening before and the Doctors could not saved her because her heart was cut in half….and she was just 30.

It takes a death of someone we love to focus our thoughts on what are the important things in our life! Thank God I realized a long time ago that when all is said and done what matters most are those you love and I have lived my life by that mantra. The death of someone’s child is hard to bear. For a mother to bury her daughter is the most sorrowful of duty any mother would want to undertake.

We called our daughter Terrina in Canada to let her know….after all there were first cousins. Terrina wanted to know that if it had really happened as if this was something she did not want to accept had happened. She had just messaged her cousin yesterday…and her inability to accept that her cousin has gone made her asked us again and again if it had really happened! Truly sometimes the human mind will not accept what it does not want to hear…but I am sure that will pass and Terrina will grieve for her cousin.

I live life with those that I love as if each day would be my last with them. Not much can detract me from that. I email my daughter in Toronto almost on a daily basis  - telling her mostly that I miss her and love her and her family endlessly. Does she email me back? No…not much but when she does it gives me great joy that she has done so. And so I go for another week or two or three before another acknowledgement comes from her! And that is the way it is with us. That I can write her anytime I want is a comfort to me. 

Zack my son stays with us and being able to see him everyday is a source of joy and happiness for my wife and me. I cannot ask for more.

My wife is with me always. We have been married over forty years. From the first time that we decided to stay together in my London days until now it has been good. That I could make the right decision at 21 to choose her as my life partner is a source of much amusement to me. That we are both together now is one of life’s gift.  I need not say much anymore.

It would do you all much good if you could take a few minutes to reflect the important things in your life. I have lost too many that I love to take any life for granted….and when they are gone they will not come back to be with us again. 

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower 
We will grieve not, rather find much
Strength in what remains behind:

William Wordsworth. 1770–1850