A friend of mine passed away a couple of days ago and when I found out about it today it sent me into a pretty reflective place. She wasn’t a friend in the traditional sense – in fact I only ever met her once in person – but I’ve known her online for well over 10 years and although she lived across the pond we would have a chat on Facebook from time to time and she was someone that I had a lot of time for.
She was always positive, never had a bad word to say about anyone and was just a genuinely nice person – and a great mum to her two children. In fact she was one of the main reasons I started blogging in the first place back in 2004!
But now she’s gone.
Although her passing won’t manifest itself in any obvious way in my day-to-day life it’s just a horrible feeling that she isn’t ‘there’ anymore. Far more importantly she is no longer there for her husband or her children or the rest of her close family and friends and I’ve absolutely no idea how you would begin to move on from that.
So today of all days I think it’s important to reflect on how incredibly lucky I am to have what I have – great, supportive, loving parents, a wife who means more to me as each year goes by and a little one who is the most amazing gift that anyone could ever ask for. I love writing about the funny and sometimes infuriating things he does because I enjoy making other people laugh and it’s nice to have that bond with other parents where we all help each other feel less alone in all of this and a bit less useless!
But today isn’t the day for one of those posts.
Today for me is about remembering that there are no guarantees in life and that the memories we create now are the things that we will have to look back on – so however many times I have to drag him down from climbing the dining table today or however many times he wakes up before 6am again this week it’s a really small price to pay for the joy that our little one has brought to our lives.
I won’t remember the bad bits as the years go by, but the good bits will stay with me for life. Fortunately we have so many good memories of our little one already and the following memories are some of the things that will send me to bed tonight with a smile on my face.
