PAINFUL ANNIVERSARIES
FOR SARAH: OCT. 2 1966 - DEC. 23 2013.
I have often written on this blog about something which dogs us all like a lurking black wolfhound once we get past the age of 60. It goes under my general heading ‘The Season of Funerals’. Once we enter the pensioner zone we’re also in life’s exit lounge. There’s only one way out and one by one, the people we’ve known and love pass through it, and we’re left behind to ponder and to grieve.
Today, October 2nd 2013, would have been our daughter Sarah’s 47th birthday, but the ravages of human biology in the form of cancer tore her from our family circle at 11.10 pm on December 23 2012.
I have good, loving friends and family who know what the pain of someone passing means. And now I realise it throws up days like today, painful anniversaries. These are the moments, the minutes, hours, which all gather together at one spot on our slim calendar to prod us into the sad realisation that we are not immortal. But, to quote Dylan Thomas, Death shall have no dominion. It will have no dominion because it cannot triumph over memory. We loved our bright, sparkling daughter with her quirky sense of humour, her ‘to hell with it all’ attitude. She has died, but she lived her short life to the hilt. Gone she may be, physically, but today I shall raise a glass to her because her laughter still rips away the gloom and reminds me of all those wonderful times she created. A beautiful child, curious, imaginative, loving, smiling. Our first born, a baby who loved the camera, a little girl who spread sunshine and grew into a competent, compassionate woman. And yet she faced death every day in her job as a nurse among geriatrics. So here it is, one of the first, the heaviest, of our painful anniversaries. But we’ll not cry, Sarah. Keep laughing, and we’ll laugh along with you until we all meet again. 