A flash of gold in an otherwise painfully grey day.
Too hard to believe that my precious Daddy died seven years ago today. I can't imagine when the ache of it will fade. One minute fine and the next a fleeting memory feels like a thump to the tummy.
Ugh. It feels like yesterday.
In a moment I am back there, laying next to him, waiting ...
He died on the most perfect, for him, day. The brilliant sun rose early in the endless Sussex sky, a small donkey roamed in the field outside the window, the birds chirped, hopefully. The crisp of the morning was pushed aside by the warmth of a glorious early English summer day. Later I lay out, face down, in the grass letting it warm me too. I remember feeling grey, looking grey. I have never experienced such pain, such anguish and oddly such relief that his valiant battle was over
- he didn't have the chance to share that day with us. But he would have loved it.
Daddy spent his career chasing the sun. He needed the warmth on his back and was miserable without it. Today I sat under the wide Australian sky, feeling the warmth on my back, my babies playing close by, full of life and energy and vitality, invigorated by the crisp air and sunshine, and I felt him close.
He died at the very end of spring. When the bluebells had been and gone. He managed one last walk in them. Daddy loved colourful flowers.
He didn't understand my love of the White Garden at Sissinghurst at all! So, today I searched for colour. Grey-green, greeny-grey, grey-grey was all that I could see,
until a little ray of sunshine arrived in my gloomy day.
He would have guffawed, and said, "It's a bloody weed!"
Thanks for popping by today and indulging me in my memory of the most extraordinary man - to me.
I hope that you have been lucky enough to have someone like him in your life.
E x
