If you are going to send someone off, send them off like my mother-in-law got sent off today.
Such an emotional day, but one filled with such positivity and so many happy memories.
It’s horribly sad when someone so loved isn’t there anymore, but given that these things do happen, more of this way of celebrating a life well lived, please.
It was a different world.
We were travelling to Norway on this day 4 years ago. Overnight flights being the vehicle of choice, we arrived tomorrow.
It was an amazing three days. And one day – some way, somehow – we will go back.
It’s unlikely to be today though. And so these photos will have to serve as a gorgeous reminder of those halcyon times.
Please click through and live vicariously through 2016 me.
…was the somewhat ominous comment I put on this photo from November 2008. But there were no actual serious injuries that day.
That’s little 0.6 being swung by my Mum and me at De Mond nature reserve down in Cape Agulhas. It was a blisteringly hot day, which is why 5-month-old K-pu was sensibly sheltering under a tree somewhere back at the car park.
For the record, Alex is now 11½ and his sister has just turned 9. Shoulder injuries and medical bills would be much more likely these days.
When someone close leaves your life, they’re never really “gone”. Memories, jogged by photographs or visits or sounds or dates – or whatever – are always there.
I could easily be walking along that sandy track next to my Mum right now: she’s counting up to 3, for Alex’s next short flight. We’re watching the terns take flight through the heat haze. We’re listening to the crickets in the grass. We should really have brought some more water along. It is – as I mentioned before – really hot. The still air is thick. Alex wants another swing.
And then back to the weirdest, dodgiest self-catering place in all of Arniston (possibly even in all of South Africa).
And this is just one moment, on one afternoon, on one day. There’s literally a lifetime of other memories, each just waiting to be accessed.
She’d want us to remember it all, from the mundane to the unusual. And I do. Most every day.
A moment of calm. A moment of thought.
Ludovico Einaudi is the man for the job.
This could be a video about man striving to find God. It might be a portrayal of one individual desperate to rise above the clamour and chaos. Perhaps it’s both.
For me today, it merely represents the opportunity to stop and be at peace for 3 minutes.
Thank you, Ludovico.
This one is from November 2008. It features my 64 year old mother, with her artifical hip (thankfully not in shot) and artificial knee (in shot) approaching the top of the Lions Head.
Despite my Mum’s fitness, this was a bit more of a test than she had anticipated – I think a lot of people think that because of its proximity to the city, and its bigger brothers (sisters?) next door, it must be an easy climb. Not so.
Mum made it up of course, although we had some entertainment and giggles with the chains that day. There’s a video somewhere of her sitting on my head as we tried to get her up them. It didn’t work, but it made for some great memories.