Remembrance Day is a powerful time of year for me. It was on that day, a while ago now, when Mike, my father in law dew his last breath. I looked at my watch and it was 2.33 in the afternoon. So, now, every November 11th at 2.33 I raise a glass of and wish him well. He was, I assume still is, a lovely soul. I am not sure that we ever get over those feelings of loss. We may come to terms with them and perhaps with time the volume of the emotional disturbance is lessened.
With Mike we had some notice. He was ill and had been ill for sometime. We knew that his ending was coming and, as much as we could, we prepared for it. With some losses it does not matter however much you prepare you are still in that awful state of loss and grief. How difficult must it when there is no notice and there is only a sudden loss.
I watch the service at the Cenotaph and other memorials and try to imagine what it must be like as service man or woman and to go out in the morning with your friends and comrades not knowing who you will be coming home with or indeed if you yourself will be coming home.
Death is an inevitable consequence of life though we expect to go at a appropriate time. When someone is older we say “Well they had a good life” or “They had a good innings.” When life is cut short prematurely through illness, accident, assault or in service the shock is great and is harder to process. I guess this is the power of Rememberance. We powerfully revisit it every year on November 11th. Yet we all have remembrance days through out the year. As is the nature of things the older we get the more people die so the remembrance days grow in number and each anniversary may get easier over time but they rarely go away.
I lost a little boy on my birthday in 1983. I would like to say that I have processed that loss and that it is easier. It is not. The angle of my memory has changed over time but each year I spend forty eight hours tracking my watch remembering what was happening on that day. Once those forty eight hours are over I hunker down and get on with life for another year until it comes back to me again.
What this experience, and working many people experiencing similar things has taught is the importance of remembering and not trying to forget or blank things out. Every loss that we experience is an active part of who we are and of our individual learning. Loss is not a bad thing it more just another part in this mystery that we call life.
If there is life after death we will all meet again in any case. If that is true death never really happens. All that happens is that our body stops working and energy that was us be that spirit or souls or whatever carries on. I guess we will never truly know until we get there.
I do experience that every November 11th at 2.33 when I raise my glass to Mike I can smell his roll your own tobacco. I would think that I am bonkers but other people smell it as well. I suspect that is Mike just dropping by to say ‘Hi’ as we tune into him. So “I’ll see you up stairs later Mike.”
Take care and enjoy your remembrances perhaps even celebrate them
Sean x
