Seeing the World

I suppose I think about dying everyday, several times a day. No don't worry I'm not morbidly depressed and given my genetics Ive probably got another 50 years to go, so I'm not even half way yet. But you never know do you?

My mum is at a stage in her life where friends and contemporaries are starting to get life threatening illnesses and some die from these. Most recently her best friend of forever died, its a lady Ive known since I was born and have some good memories of her. When we are young, and I mean in our 20s I suppose, we will live forever, there is no doubt about it we are immortal, but I have looked death in the face a couple of times, and suddenly my life seems very tenuous. Its not the dying that worries me, its the leaving behind, and as a parent I suppose we all think that.

So although I must seem like the grumpiest woman alive sometimes here, I try not to moan or grumble much in my day to day life, because our time here is so short to waste being a misery. I know a few people who do nothing but complain loud and long, day in day out and I don't want to be remembered for that, or look back at the end and think what a bloody waste it was and how I should have done so much more.

We spend our lives complaining we don't have time, but of course we do, its just how we use it. Friday night we had a power cut for 7 hours. We rely on electricity for everything here, so there wasn't much to do, no TV, no computer, no technology of any kind. That was it, so we sat in bed, because it was freezing, had the wind up radio giving a bit of crackly music and we talked and listened to each other, and talked. A rare moment.

I think, I hope, that my disability has made me see the world with fresher less jaded eyes. I know that sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish, but I think my appreciation of the small things has sored over the last year especially. So next time you are out stop and see something. I mean just how blue is the sky, how marvellous the colours of the sunset, or how large the raindrops? Look at it and seal it in your head forever, because the intensity of the moment is so much greater than the captured image.