There’s something about that old cliche of hard times putting things into perspective… it makes messages like this even more potent.

The laws of gravity are strict. It’s almost impossible to break free from them for more than a moment. Unaided by metal and fire we remain rooted back here, forever pulled down.

That’s what this year has felt like; that there has been an irresistible force pulling at my family. First my mother lost her 19 month battle with liver cancer. Her final breath on Valentine’s Day seemed fitting; something to do with eternal lovers and all that. But the pain that followed – a suffocating, drenching ache that was part comforter, part terror-figure – wiped all those platitudes and well wishes off the board. She has gone and I miss her.

The weeks passed and then, gradually, my wife and I became aware that her own mother’s five years of living with cancer wasn’t all it seemed. The tiredness, the absence, the look in the eyes was all too familiar. We talked at home about her perhaps not having so long to live – perhaps a few months, perhaps a few weeks. Six days later she too was gone.

And so, with ten weeks between them, both our mothers died. Mine was 64, Emma’s was 59.

It’s not over yet. There is one more relative – my step father – who is battling with cancer too. Yet again there are hospital visits and bedside prayers and the sense that time is running out.

I write this not to generate sympathy or to wallow in the grieving. I write this because life can never be the same again. All the words that follow will, I think, be filtered through the events of this year.

This year – 2008 – surely the worst of our lives? How odd it is to be living through it, day by day, to be functioning and laughing and working and creating and thinking and loving and running and eating and reading and playing, yet at the same time knowing the significance of these days.

We feel cushioned in so many ways. Prayer? More than likely. But I also wonder whether there is only so much sadness that the head and heart can hold at any one time.

So, I just wanted to get all this down in the pixels. There are lots of thoughts to add, but, for now, I’ll stop.

Thanks for reading.

C

Well, that was quite a silence.

More than six weeks with no posting has to be a record for me. There are reasons, though. I’ll explain, but not now.

Now I think I just ought to jump in. Enough of hovering around the edge wondering what the water will feel like. It’s time to plunge. So, here goes…

I’ve been thinking a lot about change of late; specifically the speed at which it happens. I always suspected that I was a bit flighty, that I changed my mind too quickly and that such a trait was a bad thing. My mum used to call me a butterfly. Eventually I worked out she’d got it wrong and that I wasn’t a flitting, frail-winged flower-tart. Instead, I understood that most creatives I get the buzz from the early days of the project – far more than the completion. In that respect, getting a first copy of a book sent from the publisher is always a bit of an odd experience. Somehow it seems like an anachronism, that so much life and thought and energy has passed by since the final save was sent off to be edited, proofed, typeset, proofed and printed.

But I’m digressing here.

Too often we can encounter criticism for changing our minds quickly. Decisions need to be processed over months, major life events need to be worked up to with diligence and care – neither of which are compatible with speed.

I’ve found myself in moments of great change over recent months and years. Watching a midwife weigh a newborn child; looking on as a hospice nurse closes the door behind her while she removes the wires and leads that are no longer needed; hearing myself answer the ‘how are you?’ question and realising that the answer is very different to the one delivered just a few units of time before.

I’ve noticed it in friends too; the failed relationship that – broken one week – is strong enough for marriage the next. There have been 90 degree turns and illuminated lights popping up all over the place. All around it seems that there are signs that for some, change is able to move a little more swiftly, lightly and with greater agility than before.

Like a butterfly.

Of course, of course there are the caveats and qualifications to add. But just for now I’ll stop here. Before I change my mind.