Its easy to love when all is going smoothly. When expectation is met with desired result…but when things get rough, love can be tested and then love becomes a choice……
Love is many a splendid thing…. Love is that first flutter in your belly when you see someone you like, whether you are 7 or 70.
Love is cradling your baby for the first time, not knowing, really, if you will do a good enough job at being it’s mother,/father, but you do your best anyway.
love is being so tired and sleep deprived that you still put your child’s needs before yours.
love is hating your child’s tantrums and behaviours, especially when they are teenagers, but still having their back and mopping up the mess.
Love is putting on your best dress and perfume, or best shirt and after shave and being on time and showing up for him/her.
Love is being so consumed with their wants and needs, you put yours on the back burner.
Love is allowing someone to say how they feel and not trying to negate or trivialize what they are saying.
love is putting yourself in their shoes.
love is patience, and patient.
love isn’t stagnant
love is holding yourself together, even when you are falling apart, and doing for others.
love is standing back, so someone more in need, can go first.
love is taking a minute to decide if your want/need can wait.
love is praying for loved ones and praying for strength to help you through difficult times.
love is letting go.
love is forgiveness.
love is a choice
love is learning to swallow down hurtful words and not allow it to penetrate.
love is picking yourself up, dusting yourself down and taking one step at a time.
Love is not always patient, not always kind and love is sometimes arrogant and rude and hurtful
because love comes in many disguises, depending of how safe love feels in the hands of the beholder and how wounded or lost the injured are
love endures, love lingers and love is not easily broken…….because love, is a choice…….
Love is both delightful and a curse, but love is love, and love is what drives our soul, our essence, our purpose.
We get through time, somehow, after loss. This too shall pass, they say, and the intensity and immediacy of it does fade, but the feeling of loss and grief stays and reminders are what keeps us going through each new day that we have without them in this world….. blessed to have known you….. for Jackie
“like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow”
At some stage in our lives we all have to experience loss. Loss of a relationship, loss of money, material things, loss of a loved one. Many many years ago when I was courting, my now husband, I broke off our relationship. He was very upset and so was I at the time, but I just felt that the time wasn’t right. Someone said to him ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’. He told me this when we got back together.
Throughout our lives we have many different types of relationships with family, friends, partners, teachers, work colleagues etc, each with varying depths and ties of commitment, love and connection. Sometimes it is easy to break the ties and other times it is very difficult, impossible even. Some ties will never be broken, whether the person is here or not. So we must count ourselves very lucky when we are able to say ‘Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all’. Loving some one and feeling love is just the most precious gift and one to treasure forever and be thankful for.
Having lost my dear friend one year ago today, I am thankful for the years we had together as friends, like sisters, thankful for the experiences we shared and the memories that linger on, to keep her alive. This post, is for her…….
Jackie………
The many times I reach for the phone, then realise
No, no now
As I take the milk carton from the fridge and in bold writing the ‘use by’ date
Is that specific date
A wasp as it weaves its way in my direction, like it’s on a mission
Reminds of you running and screaming down the isle of the bus to avoid it’s sting
When the person next to me orders a J D and Coke at the bar
When I see a Sainsbury’s bag, ad, Next, River Island or Karen Millen Label
All signs
A packet of Benson and Hedges, Marlboro Menthol, Vapes
Reminds me of players No.6 and us getting suspended from school for smoking on the bus
And having cigarettes on our person
Oh how we howled with laughter
Vaseline cream and cotton wool to take off your make up and moisturise
how you swore by it
Progressing to Lancôme, Miss Dior and any brand of lipstick, so long as the colour was right
Sunbeds, sun bathing and prickly heat
Strong tea, strong coffee and bacon ribs
Dundalk, Coventry, Nuneaton and South Carolina
Place names remain, all reminders of you
Every time I walk through my front door and your photo is there to greet me
Every pic or meme I post on Facebook, the absence of your like, emoji or comment
Reminds me of that empty space
Laughing, crying, celebrations and times of sadness
My mind transports to you
Every time I see two old ladies, talking, laughing, sitting together
My future longs for you
In the noise and the silence, every morning and the last thing at night
All reminders of you
The staghorn tree in rich rust red, standing prominent and tall
Planted in memory of you
Laughing eyes and a bright white smile
A plethora of ordinary things will continue to, thankfully,
remind me of you.
24/03/1965 – 23/09/2021
For my best friend, my sister from another mister, my heart and my thanks
Death, of course, is part of life. When it comes to our door, it is very hard to navigate through the pain and loss, but grieving means they were loved, as were we.
authors own image
When a flower, a tree or person dies it doesn’t do so, without leaving its mark, its stamp, its impact or its seed behind. It may be un-living, but it leaves something behind that keeps it alive.
Nine days ago, my father died. It was a sudden passing, unexpected. It has shaken us, his family and left us unsteady on our feet. I am still grieving the loss of my very dear friend, who passed, Seven months ago.
What I have come to know in this grief, is that I must go through this process, feel this pain, navigate a way forward through the fog and learn to live with the fact that I will not see them again.
What I also know, is that, even though I won’t see them again, does not mean that they are not with me or near me. I think about them both, every minute of the day. I talk about them both several times a day and I talk to them both, every day too.
My grief and pain for my dad is still very raw and I guess, I have had a trial run at grief, when I lost my friend, so I know what to expect.
I also know I have to be thankful, for the time that we had, grateful for the good times and blessed to know that I was loved by them and happy in the knowledge that I loved them both dearly.
It is never easy to lose a parent and even though my dad was 81, we still hoped for more time with him. There is never a good time to die, I guess. Having said that, I am glad he did get to 81, because so many people do not, including my friend.
Those of us left behind, are the seeds, the impact, the mark and we have been stamped by them, with their love and affection and it is that, which will carry us through the pain and gravity of the loss. We must hold on to the good times, remember them fondly and know that we were loved.
R.I.P Dad, til we meet again……
Eternity
Voices, noise, placed on hands
Staring ahead, nodding
Wetted cheeks, can’t stem the flow
The oak box raised on the
Shoulders of black suits
Slow uniformed steps, synchronised
And I am there, following
Disbelieving somehow, that the patriarch
No longer will walk beside me, hold me, comfort me
And as he is lowered into the dark deep hole
My heart breaks open
And his love, his spirit, his soul is stored deeper in it
Sometimes I still pinch myself that I made it through motherhood with everyone pretty much unscathed. I have raised my own and other people’s children, being a mother and foster mother and at times, it was the hardest job EVER, but the most rewarding, so now, it’s ‘me’ time and I am loving it!
moi… authors ownet moi…. lolling around…living it up large!
Today I’m having a fat day, a lazy day
A day where I can loll around
In my dressing gown
I love having a fat day
It is full bodied, full of self- love and indulgence
It starts with a lay in bed, reading
Eating breakfast and not minding if the crumbs fall onto the sheets
After a while I nod off for another snooze
I awake again, put on my dressing gown and head downstairs
I have a cuppa and maybe a biscuit or two
And wrap my hands around the warmth of the cup and my dressing gown
Tightly around me
I read some more of my book, curled up on the sofa and put the fire on
Cosy in my living room, soaking up the fullness of just ‘being’…
Later I will turn on the TV and flick through the channels until something
Grabs my attention. I may watch it for an hour or two or for the rest
Of the day until it is time, to go to bed again
In between, I will head into the kitchen and eat and nibble and pick at
Whatever I choose to eat, whatever, takes my fancy
And I won’t feel one bit guilty
Why?
I won’t feel guilty because I have spent my days, working, fetching and carrying
Raising children, keeping house, putting other people first, putting myself to the back of the queue
Except for the occasional treat.
Mums, all over the world are on the marathon of motherhood and it is exhausting, exhilarating, heartfelt and heart breaking. We fight, we fix, we do. We just do. We get on with it and we get lost in it. The girl you were, that carefree girl, before motherhood, she is gone. She is hiding in the body of the mad woman working from morning ‘til night, full of sleep deprivation, spinning plates and trying to please EVERYONE and in the process there is no time or very very little time, for her to please herself.
So now, now that my nest is empty, 33 years later, of getting lost in motherhood, I can, without guilt or remorse, please myself and have a great big fat day to myself and enjoy it wrapped up in the warmth of my dressing gown, and in the knowledge, that the job I did of being mother, was a success. My Children are a success, they are wonderful human beings getting on in the world on their own journeys, full of their own adventures, and I couldn’t be happier for them….. or me!
Relay shun ships 
You must be logged in to post a comment.