One Final Day

One day we will hug a person we love for the last time, or scruffle a dog's neck, or eat a final meal, or stare at a view that's precious to us. Nothing lasts forever, and this reality can be either a terror or a catalyst. Its 00.22 in the morning as I sit here on my sofa. I've just been looking through pictures on my Ipad. Apple do this clever technical thing in which an image briefly moves before it locks into place. There are several images of my beloved Billy that move ever so slightly before he settles and becomes still.To see him move is terribly piercing. I want to glance to my right and see him snuggled up on the top of the sofa, only he's gone. Gone forever. All of you who read this will likely have experienced the longing for one last contact with someone or something departed. A primal yearning to reach out. To touch, to hold, to inhale a fragrance or feel the contours of someone's features. It's a unique kind of agony, right? It's an impossible wall through which none can pass. Where the only currency is memory, which often seems a poor relation. Some things in life we cannot have. Some things we cannot change. And it hurts. You know what? I have no clue where I'm going with this. Just screaming into the void, really. I have no particular words of comfort I can bring that would brighten the day of somebody feeling this way. I mean how could I? But know this; what you feel, what I feel as I type this is utterly normal, and also beautifully human. It means there was something in our lives that was precious, something of real meaning. A deep connecting element, a presence you could love and cherish and yearn for. What a gift to have had such a thing? What a privilage to have felt that most sacred ache. Some call it love, but whatever its name its a mysterious force that reminds us that we're not just flesh and bone. Goodness knows I struggle with faith, but who hasn't yearned to see someone who they have lost again. Greedy perhaps, but understandably so. I'm so fortunate to have a wife and kids I adore, and a wider family that I'm proud to stand alongside. I am not bereft of love, nor without hope, yet still I yearn for that which the universe cannot afford me. What I would give for one last walk along the canal with Billy, or one last phone call with my Dad during the half time of a football match. One last connection with the ghosts of our past. What a glorious thing that would be. . .