Suddenly silenced #oneweek #allaboutyou

Last week was one of those weeks where you are left wondering as my son would say ‘what the heck?’

It has been an incredibly sad week. In a period of 48 hours we got news of three souls that where no longer with us. Two lost to the thief that is cancer and one tragic little young life whose brave hearted and selfless parents made the agonising decision to prevent their little one from suffering any more. Heart-breaking and so unfair.

I sat in the car after dropping the kids off at school and nursery with that empty space feeling. Where you almost don’t want to move for fear that life is going to just continue on, barging through the sadness and racing away into the next thing.

I didn’t move. Not for a while.

Then instead of going home and sorting piles of washing, clearing up the discarded cheerios, return those calls and emails that were silently, unrelentingly bleeping on my phone. I drove to one of the prettiest places i know in this city at this time of year and i just walked with the slow leisure of someone who, at the moment, was just looking after herself. I tried to notice things with new eyes. Eyes that appreciate the here and now, the time we have, the glimpse of light that is our life and how we must try and seize every precious moment of it.

The spring is so pretty, so vibrant. So alive.

I sat on a bench for a while and a lady sat near me.  She was all flustered and sat down with a thud. She had a large notebook on her lap and flipped it open in a business like way and started to dial a number on her phone. Whoever she called was met with a very chipper and short ‘Hello Stephen its me, now about that wallpaper…’

I listened to her for a while, her conversation moved onto the colours of paint she was picking out and how small the room was. Stephen must have said something funny because she let out a loud chuckle and grinned into the phone.

I wondered what we must look like?

Two people sat on the same bench but having very different emotions. Funny how life carries on. Funny how we can’t all feel the loss of another life. Why the sadness of one person doesn’t somehow reach out and touch another. How we don’t all feel a wrench when another soul takes their last breath. But i guess that is what keeps the wheel of life turning. That whilst there are those suffering great hurt there are those experiencing great joy. Surely its the very promise that the sadness we may feel will pass and start to fade, not forgotten, but replaced by a different sort of status quo that is well with our souls.

Balance.

On this beautiful spring day when there were demands a plenty on my time, i took a moment to be still and promised to ‘carpe diem’