Refections

Today's been an emotional day, a big day, a happy day, a sad day. 
I quietly celebrated, commiserated, remembered and enjoyed. 
It was as if all of life and all of life's ups and downs wanted to get a look in today. And a good chunk of variable weather wanted to get a look in too.

The day started with yet more heavy rain. It absolutely chucked it down! It also started with tiredness and a thumping hangover. Instead of having a meal last night, I drank a shedload of Prosecco and then went onto red wine.
Smart.
We were celebrating Tess's 11th birthday yesterday and the birth of a new baby in the family. This new baby has made my elder sister a granny for the first time, made me and my younger sister great aunts for the first time and made our mum a great granny for the first time. Exciting, huh?! ! Gemma and Tom came up from Exeter with presents for Tess and their pug puppy for entertainment - who brought lots of joy - and we sat up late talking with them. It's been a difficult few weeks and both Richard and I felt pretty under par yesterday, and disappointed we weren't able to do more for Tess.

As I was trying to get up this morning and see-sawing between the sadness of remembering it was the anniversary of Dad's death one way and the joy of new life, puppies and children the other way, and then down again to the misery of a headache and tiredness, Richard brought me a cup of tea telling me that David Bowie had died of cancer.
I thought 'Oh, no! What a shame!' and felt sad but not really personally affected in any way at all. As I checked in with social networks and the news I couldn't help noticing that our Dad died 2 years younger than Bowie, and it struck me that I wasn't able to feel affected by Bowie's death because I didn't know him. I know how it feels to be the child of someone wonderful, interesting and creative, and to lose them prematurely to a vicious, evil disease so, yes, I felt sad for his family, as I felt sad for me and my family but I could see how any influence he had had would live on and my life and his impact wouldn't change in any way. In fact the media was so loaded with Bowie significance that eventually it began to irritate me. It was relentless all day as if nothing else was happening anywhere, I felt like I was being fed a level of importance, told how to react, how to feel the significance, and yet I had my own deep and mixed emotions about my own loss and events and so I realised I needed to ignore the TV.

By midday the rain had cleared, and we were out of the house and at the beach, for Richard's first beach walk since his hernia operation. He was pretty slow and rather shuffle-y but he did it and I was thrilled. I've been really looking forward to the first day we could go to the beach together again. He's waited a long time to get all this over with and to feel he is out the other side. 
The weather was beautiful compared with this morning and there was hardly anyone else around. It was lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. 

I have spent the remainder of the day exhausted and full of memories and emotions, and trying to avoid BBC News. 

I now can't remember what else I was going to type...