The prelude...

Well I'm sure the first post will be the hardest. In order for me to start with today, I need to back track a few weeks.... to the reason that has prompted me to write this blog to begin with.

No doubt this page and/or postings wont be of interested to everybody, if anybody at all, but it will definitely be a way that I can download and process the current events of my life.

It was the end of November, 27th to be exact, I awoke at 5am and checked my facebook page - a regular way of trying to wake myself up in order to make a production line of lunchboxes. To my complete shock and devastation I saw the status of a dear friend telling all that her husband had died, quickly and unexpectingly, early that morning! OMG! I lay there for a good 5 minutes trying to work out if it was serious or part of a strange joke that I had missed along the way. Knowing he was not even 50, fit and healthy, I assume he has had an accident. I look over at my husband sleeping - unsure as to whether I wake him or not - and at the same time desperately wanting to throw myself on him and apologise for the horrible person I can be to live with and thank him that he still lay next to me after almost 16 years of marriage!! I think he must have sensed me staring at him and he reluctently opened one eye, I couldn't hold myself back - Clifford is dead I tell him. Again he goes through a similar reaction - shock, wondering if it's true or not, more shock!

Then and there, like a lightening bolt from heaven, I suddenly understand how fragile life can be and how much I need to stop resenting the challenges life, and those closest to me, can throw my way. I update my Facebook status to read "make sure we love the people today that we will miss tomorrow". I realise that I have spent sooooooo much energy fighting with my husband, that I have lost sight of the fact that if I had woken up without him that my world would be devastated!! And further than that - people that I rub shoulders with that sometimes rub me the wrong way - did it really matter? I couldn't think of one person that I wouldn't feel sad about had it been them. But is that the way I live and treat them?

I have dazed through the day like I am living in someone elses body - turned on but completely disconnected! My heart is breaking for my friend, yet in a strange way I feel rebuked knowing how in love and happy they were together... she would hold no regret of threats of leaving him, no regrets at not telling him she loved him - her regret would be not having him there to continue their happy journey. I am rebuked, knowing that had it been me, I would have so many things weighing heavy upon my heart - things that could not to extracted - words that could not be undone.

Time for a new Facebook status "Philippa is making a greater effort to love without reason or resentment"