The time has finally arrived for my wife, Sharon, and I to sell up and move to another house, another place not too far away. We have a buyer and things are moving along to a point where we should be leaving late April/early May.
I will carry around with me so many memories of the thirty years we lived in this four-bedroom house. Memories I will treasure until it’s my turn to take that final breath. No doubt you can imagine how bringing up four lively boys contained drama aplenty. The ups, the downs, the times we were spun around; we experienced it all in that house.
Like a woman after giving birth, most of that pain has been forgotten or dulled, overtaken by the wonder and joy that also occurred.
In this blog I would like to tell you about one particular time. It didn’t last more than ten minutes, but as sure as it rains in England, I will never forget the experience. It happened about 15 years ago. The winter darkness of night had arrived when I decided to take a brief walk around our lovely garden. It was while I was standing next to Sharon’s favourite tree that I noticed near enough every room was lit-up and occupied by my wife and four sons, all involved in one activity or another.
It looked to me like the house was blazing with life. The sight filled my heart and made fresh my love for each one of them. The tears rolled as I realised for what must have been the twenty thousandth time how good life has been to me.
I stayed there till the cold finally convinced me to go back inside. The distant winking stars added to my already emotional frame of mind and the yellow winter moon completed the fullness of my mood.
It hadn’t been long, surly no more than ten minutes, but boy did my feelings flow. And with it so did the wonder of my family life as well as the raw honesty of nature’s breath all around us.
Though the house contains many fulfilling memories, with them come the more recent ones that contain the passing of our eldest son. They are too hard to bear in this same house. So now we move on, drawing a line under the time we worked, lived, cried and laughed as one big family.
The future is there to be created, and Sharon and I are ready to start this new chapter in our fiery lives.
In my poems I always endeavour to show how the one thing that never changes in life, whether large or small, is change itself. You just have to be willing to roll with the punches and create the best life you can.
Thanks for taking these few minutes to read about my precious ten minutes. Next week I will share another moment or two of utmost joy.
