Rainy days & holidays.

Finally out of bed after a couple of days of increased pain. I learnt yesterday, via Facebook, which I am trying to avoid, but which is often my only connection to the outside world, that an old school friend has died. I didn’t know her that well in the years since we left high school, but had been in touch with her recently as she and I shared a diagnosis. I realise that we shared not much more than a diagnosis and having attended, and hated, the same school in our teenage years, and yet I find myself thinking about her this morning, thinking about her family, her sons and her friends, and contemplating my own life and mortality.

Am I lucky to still be alive suffering the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’? Am I grateful for the close friends I do have, for having been brought up by a passionate father who loved me very much, and a hard-working and selfless mother, who I am now fortunate enough to live with, even though it was the last thing I had expected? Am I grateful to be living in my childhood home, in the midst of a friendly enough Thames-side village, a mere stone’s throw from some of the most beautiful countryside I know? I sit and muse these and other questions of thankfulness and appreciation for what I do have, and resolve to focus on this, for today at least, and not on what I feel I lack.

So today, I will get outside, into the clean air and the fresh rain. I will wrap my pain up against the damp weather and will enjoy the natural surroundings I feel lucky enough to have the opportunity to experience, every day if I so choose to.