I had started my first blog a few months earlier, in January that year. Going back there now, I find that I wrote a short post about it two days later: Life is fragile.
The years that followed were rather chaotic, as my dad was not well either, and he died two years later.
Looking back now from further down the road, I'm still thankful that I had started blogging (and making some online friends) some time before all that happened. Blogging has been helpful through the ups and downs in all sorts of ways: Sometimes to sum up what is happening; and at other times, to forget about it for a while. And in retrospect, I also find it helpful sometimes to be able to go back and check what I did (or didn't) write at a certain point in time.
Photo of my parents, taken by a friend of theirs in 2007.
Always reminding me of these lyrics by Paul Simon:
Old Friends
...
Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy
Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear
Time it was
And what a time it was
It was . . .
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago . . . it must be . . .
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you
I am not much of a preserve things but I do know the few photos I have, when I look at them it jogs a memory, even of my boys when they were little. I have post ready to go next week of my sons in the 70's.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to that! :)
DeleteI have lots inherited family photos now besides my own; the problem is that there are very few notes to go with the old ones, so a lot of guesswork involved in trying to figure out who, when and where...
I agree, blogging can be like journaling. Helping us get through things in life. The picture of your parents is lovely, and really does remind me of the Paul Simon song. Is your poem one line? I did not see a longer one. Simple, yet profound. A sad day for you, I hope you manage to get through it well.
ReplyDeleteGinny - What poem?? Don't know what you're referring to?
DeleteI found reading your old blog post very touching. How far we have all come in the last 10 years.
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge preserver of memories - principally photographs and letter and post cards etc - although I'm trying to sort them out these days and get rid of the dross. My blogs are very important to me from that point of view too.
Thanks for being an "old friend" to me by now, Graham! ;) And still catching up with my blogs...
Delete