Giving Thanks; reasons to smile

I wrote this for me, this is a special day for me. But then I realised how callous that could be for a casual passing by blipper, so please don't read on unless you want to, as some of the content isn't nice. 
The 'one year ago' feature probably adds context.


****

I'm lucky that I get to walk & wander in this my cathedral often, but there is one day of the year I now come to simply be. To ponder & wonder within the wonder of it all.
It's not a cathedral where I come for an absolution I'll never receive or to repent the mistakes I can't unmake, it's not a cathedral where I expect to find any shrubbery ablaze and it's not somewhere I'd take any sermon with grace. But it is here more than any other place that I find a path forward. Its here I come closest to finding my truth.

9 years. 
9 years since she was killed. 
Gone. Taken not lost. 

I'd struggle to find a way to describe how long these 9 years have been, how much has changed or the ways our world & lives have been rebuilt. Trying not to fall into the abyss, trying to honour her by trying to be more.
And yet... in so many ways there are, and always will be, times when it feels that not a moment has passed - when the weight of her loss holds me fast to a past that has too much gravity to ever escape, still trying to reach out and drag me back down in to it's dark depths, wanting to be everything. There are times when I think it should be everything, for what could or should possibly matter more? how is aught else anything other than a distraction? a fool's illusion cast to hide away a dark shaded truth.

But, thankfully, with grace, a but..

Those moments are few and though they are hard to endure I now know how to survive them. 9 years has for the most part let me master the moments, they seldom take me by surprise, they rarely win the day.Now I can choose to believe in something more. Now I choose to look for the stars shining brightly that the dark no longer dims;
The memory of a smile, the lost music of a laugh, the remembered touch of a hand on my face - they all now carry more meaning than the how or why of her ending. All make me know that moving on is the only right thing to do to celebrate who my mother was and the love she gave us all, to be the son she wanted to raise.
Today on my mother's birthday we sat a while under a glorious sky and watched a little puppy play on her first Wainwright. We talked of the hard year gone and the better year ahead, we remembered others now passed and gave thanks for those still here.
We looked out at this view and we smiled, and that was enough. More than enough.

Mum, 
9th April 1952
 to 
15th Jan 2010