Unsaid Goodbyes

I was helping Mum clean up the garage and move things into storage when she asked "What do you do with memorial cards?". Without hesitation I responded "Just chuck them, you won't look at them". However as I approached the box she was going through, I saw face after face of people who had been such a large part of my childhood. We used to go to parties and BBQs at their houses regularly on the weekend, swim in their pools, have them over for drinks. They were my parents circle of friends, and we kids went along for the ride. Here they all were, reduced to a handful of photographs to be remembered by.

It was a depressing realisation, that your friends will go, not after a fight and usually without a chance of saying goodbye. They will one day just be gone, and as you age, more and more of them will disappear. 

We decided to keep the cards, an unsaid agreement as we packed them back into a box. At that moment the new neighbours turned up. New in the sense of friends of a decade's standing, not like those now deceased whose friendships had spanned thirty or forty years. They came to see if we needed help, and to catch up for a brief chat. There was a comfort in that.

I guess the moral is, don't stop entertaining and catching up with your friends, just because you have kids (or kids of different ages). As a small child, I loved running around those gardens, or watching tv in the strange lounge, even though the other kids were teenagers and not willing to play with me. I loved playing with their dogs or old box of discarded dolls. These people became like family in my mind, and I mourned again, seeing the photos. Most importantly, don't stop spending time with friends because you don't know when you'll lose the chance to do it again. It's people that make a life, and moments together that make it so special.

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