Heart-Ache…

There are certain things for me that bring on heart-ache.

That make my stomach flip, or my heart plunge or the butterflies below my diaphragm flurry.

When I walk through a graveyard I am a young girl again holding my grandmother’s hand;

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I feel a longing… not so much a desire to be a child again as a longing…

To know her now that I am a woman who can better understand how she felt as a wife, a mother, a nana, and perhaps listen more closely with the ear of my heart, to what she has to say.

Relaxing at my local coffee shop, in my mind’s eye I watch the receding tide slap loudly against the stranded fishing boats on a beach in Broadstairs, a cappuccino cupped in my hand; I’m astonished by the sudden missing of my parents.  The hollow of their absence never quite quelled by the passing years.

Photographing broken down barns and sheds in fields of trees and cows,

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causes me to slow my inhalation so I do not overflow with anxiety over the lost decades.  At eight my whole world could be counted on the fingers of one hand, today no-one is left from the original count and the memories sometimes are heavy with sorrow.

When I awake in the early hours of morning with the goodnight prayer I’d send my children to sleep with fresh on my tongue, I close my eyes to prowl the family home, watching each child in slumber, feeling the comfort of living under one roof, growing impatient with the interminable passage of childhood; the prickle of tears behind my lids reminds me of the preciousness of now and I breathe slowly staying time for a moment.

When bonfire smoke tickles my nostrils and I close my eyes I see my grandfather burning branches and brush he has cleared from his land and I am an innocent 3 year old again, safe in my father’s arms after a long visit with my grandparents where I grew fat on cream and butter and love.

Reflecting on my faith as I walk first thing in the still, cool, morning softness,

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I feel the phone against my ear and once more hear my cousin’s gentle thoughts on worship,

“Instead of struggling to live my days to the glory of God perhaps I should find a way to gracefully die to His glory.”

and my insides flutter for friends lost forever.

I wish my grandmother could have watched me grow to middle age, I wish my parents were still here as I approach retirement, I wish I could see my children as old men and women…wise and mellow and much more perceptive as with each year they understand me a little bit better.

In this wish I want to leave behind a legacy for my children.

I want to answer all the questions they don’t know to ask.

I want them to know that which they don’t know they don’t know.

I want them to hear my dreams that manifested themselves in the hum drum of ordinary life and found God waiting patiently.

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