As the years go flying past
you realise just how much
your perspective changes and
when I now look back at how
things were I realise that far
from having had an uneventful life
mine has been one so full and rich
with love and laughter that I wonder
that there was time for it all to fit.

How we laughed as we left the wedding reception
and all those ‘old fogeys’ and drove away
to enjoy our honeymoon together – alone!
and how we loved each other finding fun in
all that we did together, sometimes
just looking at each other – and how
highly amused we were by the ‘jobs-worth’
car-park attendant by our hotel who stuck his hand out
the moment we crossed his threshold and said
“ten pee please”, he did it every time we went
there, often just to hear him say it again, and
how beautiful you looked in that dress that was
covered in the lovely cherry design. I think
everybody else loved you too.

How wonderful the mead tasted as we sat by the
pub fire in a place we’d never before heard of
never letting go of each others hands for a minute
and how the regulars who treated us so nicely
must have thought we were a bit bonkers.

The joys in raising our beloved children and
the intertwining pain of watching them sometimes
get a little hurt along the way, but our always
being there to help them find their own right solutions
has helped weave a rich tapestry through our lives.
The times when you want to take their pain and
make it your own – but can’t, the smile on their faces
and their laughter as they play with friends and
of course the grumpy expressions as they rail against
doing homework and tidying things like bedrooms. But
what pride we felt at their achievements along the way.

And now they too are married, one on a beach
under a lovely blue sky on the other side
of the world, and one in a most beautiful
church in our capital city. We spend such a
lot of time laughing with our grandchildren,
they are so very clever, and so funny – and
they just make us feel so young again.

Illness – illness!! Now there’s an unfortunate
word, one that has been used in our lives rather
more often than we would like. My wife has been ill,
survived and can still love and laugh. I have too,
but I can still love and laugh. Our children are not
unscathed either from this darker part of growing older,
and yet they too still happily love and laugh very much
and with all their hearts. Illness really is just
a small percentage of our time here.

So now when I reflect on my life I realise that
far from being ordinary I have been very lucky
indeed to have taken part in a life that has overflowed
with love and fun and laughter and only the occasional
sadness and it’s then that we help each other through
to the other side of it. It turns out the fact is
there has been nothing ordinary about my life at all.

And I’ll not be bowing out yet – not yet

©Joe Wilson – My life less ordinary 2014