The Arms of Sorrow

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got – Henry Ford

I was amazed (probably, I shouldn’t have been) that on the Internet this quote is attributed to other people besides Henry Ford. One business website attributes the quote to Albert Einstein, for instance.

Anyway, I digress.

I think last year I mentioned that February and March is a sad time for me and I end up taking time off work with illness.  In February 2015 I was absent from work with sickness for four days and the same thing happened again in March last year.

March 2009 was when my father passed away, whilst I lost contact with someone special to me during March 2014.  February is connected to that same person for a special reason which I won’t go into right now.

In November last year, I planned ahead and booked some time off.  My leave started Thursday last week and I returned to work yesterday.  It meant that I would be home on my own to grasp time for myself to think about the two people I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I was pretty ineffectual as a human being last weekend.  Sunday saw me biting Gloria’s head off at the slightest thing.

During my week of leave from work, I had chance to sort a few things out around the house; those DIY (Do It Yourself) items that I have been putting off for a number of months.

One thing was to sort out a box of paperwork that I kept ignoring week after week for…I don’t know how many months.  Some of the post in the box was my late father’s which dated back as far as 1984.  That box is no longer making the place look untidy, so I scored a success there.

Seeing that post and realising how quick each task I completed was, I lamented how I have been putting things off.  If I keep on putting things off, I will never get to finish my studying for that IT exam, for example.

This week – and every week – I have a choice.  If I carry on as before, I know what will happen.  I will die without making an impression on the world.

For all of the anger in my heart at the evil out there, I will have helped to change nothing.  At present, my ideals are not resulting in enough action.

The realisation came to me of how scared I am to be bold.

I am sure that if I were to die today, there are people that will remember me as someone with a kind heart.  I’m not mocking that, that is fantastic.

However, I want to look down from heaven and be able to see at least one person living a better life because of something that I have done whilst still alive.  I want to admire myself.  I hope that expression isn’t too clumsy.

 

And so, to the weekend…

The next few days will prove eventful, although I cannot thank myself for any of this action.

Tomorrow afternoon is the funeral of my half-sister’s mother.  She was a Polish lady who married my late father soon after the Second World War.

I don’t know the story, so I cannot share it with you.  I’ll tell you what I know.

After War was declared, Britain internally evacuated school children away from city centres as there was uncertainty how soon Germans would start bombing British towns.

My father was at school when the Second World War broke out and was evacuated to a place called Liss.  He loved to preach at the United Reformed Church in Liss as he had fond childhood memories of the village.  I remember driving him there on several Sunday mornings.  At that time I drove a white Proton Persona.

On D-Day plus three, my father’s best friend was killed in action.  My father ended up in Germany at the end of the War and, so I was told, spoke German in the accent of one of the nearby villages so well that some German residents thought that he was a native of this nearby village.  He also remained a pen friend of one of the German POWs for life.

Soon after returning to England, he married a Polish woman that he had met.  Tomorrow, this lady will be laid to rest.  She was a pleasant woman with whom to speak, which Gloria will testify to.

On Friday night I am on driving-Yasmin-and-her-friends-to-town-on-their-night-out duty.  I haven’t done that for a few months.

And on Sunday, my nephew Otis is running in the London Marathon for charity.

A screen grab of my nephew’s fundraising page

He hasn’t yet hit his fundraising target, unfortunately, but he is still raring to run and raise what money he can for a charity that has grabbed a place in his heart.

He has run a marathon before so knows what to expect.

At the moment, Otis is sleeping on a camp bed in my mother’s bungalow.  It wasn’t the best idea for him to stay on where he had been lodging.  My Mum wanted to put him up to help him save for a deposit on a better place hence his address for a couple of weeks has been the same as his grandmother’s.

She worries about him a lot although I am certain that he’s more capable than she thinks.  She probably worries about him because he never raises his voice or show any upset or anger with anyone, no matter what happens.  I think that she in concerned that he’s too easily bullied.

He will be moving to his new place in the next few days.

So, an active weekend without me doing too much effort myself.

Gone but not forgotten

Last Saturday was the seventh anniversary of my father passing away.  He had suffered for several years with Parkinson’s Disease so I had a few years to watch him deteriorate.

Before you think that this is going to be a long post about how sad I am, I want to assure you that I won’t be dwelling on how he died.  After all, he managed to pack a few things into his life so I’ll mention a few of them.

At the start of the Second World War he was one of the schoolchildren who were evacuated away from the cities that were thought to be at high risk of bombing from the Nazi regime.  By the end of the war he was in Germany having landed in France on D-Day +3.  He remained a lifelong friend of one of the German prisoners of war.

He adopted my mother’s two children – both of my parents had been married and divorced by the time that they met.  The story is that my Dad was preaching one Sunday and my Mum was in the congregation.  I wasn’t there, so I have to take their words for that.

He was also a Reverend and even took part in the service when Gloria and I were married.

Anyway, I won’t go on too much about what things he managed to do.

I was thinking that it’s strange how someone you love may have passed away but you still end up feeling different emotions towards them each and every day.  It’s as if you’re still constantly seeing them and arguing and laughing with other, just like you had in years gone by.

My little problem in 2016

For many of us, there are dates during the year that remind us of something important that we have lost.  For me, there are two such dates.  One of these is in February and another in March.  My father passed away on Thursday 19th March 2009 following a long period suffering from Parkinsons Disease.

And so, February and March are the most stressful months for me.  This means that since 2009, I seem to catch every germ and bug doing the rounds.

This isn’t going to be a post of woe and of how hard done by I am.  I mean, this blog is called “Sad Music, Dark Literature and Positive Thoughts 2”.  So, we won’t be deviating too far from positive thoughts, right?

I mentioned in my post from only two days ago, that I would explain what had delayed this post from finding its way up here on this site on Sunday.  The explanation is that I’ve been feeling quite rough for a couple of weeks and I am now off work on a course of antibiotics.

My trip to and from the hospital out of hours doctor via a taxi and also grabbing my prescription last night have left my wallet twenty five British pounds lighter.  I guess that this cannot be helped.

I worked from home on Monday but was not up to even doing that since Tuesday.

Look, I don’t want to moan about every ache and pain that I have – I don’t suffer from the proverbial man flu!  However, it became a concern when the cocktail of symptoms that I was suffering from were supplemented by feeling confused and losing my short term memory.

This confusion and memory loss is due to my body diverting resources to fighting the bugs in my body, the doctor reassured me.  It’s clearly not important to remember where you have just placed your drink bottle, keys or half-eaten plum.

I want to sign off by telling you all that I am looking after myself with good food.Porridge for breakfast, salad for lunch, fruit for a snack and home cooked food for supper would normally be the ideal guardians of good health.

Sometimes, there are emotions that will try and knock you down whatever you do to stop them.  You just have to get ready to pick yourself back up afterwards.