“That” day has been and gone again. Every year I say it’ll be less. Every year I am wrong. It has become part of my life, part of our lives, that we share a day in the year we dread. It is a different day for each of us but the effect on us both is the same. For one it is a meaningless day in the calendar, the other a pain that will not fade. We both understand. We each offer the other our hand, our shoulder, our love. It is how it is for us.
I have lost an Aunt and two Uncles to natural causes in the last couple of years and a dear friend to murder: a brutal and ignominious termination of a vital and vibrant life. A life which touched so many by her wise words, her understanding and her humour. It weighs so very heavily on me that I was possibly the last person to communicate with her. If only...
Now I look forward. A wedding is a rebirth, a chance to reform and remake anew. It is not a forgetting nor is it “closure”. We are who we are because of our journey to this place, all the highs, the lows, the pain and the pleasure. We must not deny any of it for that would be to deny part of our very selves. We are whole people.