At last! My end of January Blog
How good it is to have the blogs back and finally catch up with the people who post regularly, the members of the Blog Community. I have been reading blogs here since 2005 so I have read thousands in my time on here and I admit to being a blogoholic. And I really miss you all when you are not blogging for some reason or when the blogs are down. It happens from time to time that I am away and not able to access a computer and that precipitates withdrawals if it happens for too long. So you were all missed.
The first month of the year is always difficult for me, it is the aftermath of all that busyness before Christmas I think. Also here in Australia it is summer and humid and the days are long so I need more activity to fill them up when the last thing I feel like doing is being energetic. And it is school holidays so everything is either postponed or off until February and so there is no set pattern to life. For me January is reading month so a lot of light fiction and the opportunity to say “ no housework today” and sit and relax. It is great to be able to do that now I am not a full time caregiver for anyone.
January is also the bad news, the first couple of funerals for the year. This leads out of the pastoral care work I do for the church and the fact that I have in the past belonged to so many organisations that now I am burying the older friends who supported me in the early days of my stroke journey with Ray. A friend in need is a friend indeed and I have never forgotten those people who stood by us through the bad times. I know for some people the idea is to leave all of that behind and “move on” but that is not for me, if you are a friend when I need you then you go on being a friend. I always say I drag my friends through life with me.
And so life goes on. Good days and bad days, sweet days and sad days, as the song says. The sweet times were with my son and grand daughter Alice in Broken Hill, I was with them for the first nine days and that was a great time. As Alice had also been with me for Christmas at my house she was used to me being around. On the first day of access after I left she insisted on looking in Granny Sue's caravan to make sure Daddy was right and I wasn't there. I have heard from her since and she is still chatting away as if I was right there. In fact we did a walk “together” with Daddy holding the phone and her chatting to me as they walked, a small child's imagination in action.
My daughter and grand daughter Naomi also came down for a couple of nights. I had been without a phone and computer access for a week ( long story) and she set up an old mobile (cell) phone for me. I have resisted having a portable phone of any kind as I figure you can leave a message for me on Facebook, send me an email, send me a letter and that is fine but without a phone and a computer I admit I did find it hard to keep in touch, so now I carry a phone and use a USB stick modem so I can do some work on the computer. Hopefully I will have the landline and full access back soon and will be able to do more.
Church is slowly gearing back up to start the year as we do with meetings, meetings and more meetings in February/March so I am going to be trotting along at my normal pace soon. And I think I am not a race horse or a rocking horse I am a little trotter, one of those about the size of a pit pony. I will go on working with older folk and children in ministry. I have a new lady to visit in a different nursing home this year and on Wednesday I go to a funeral to farewell another lady I have been visiting for four years. That is the downside of pastoral work, the people I have come to love die. Stark truth, but I have done what I could for them and that has to be enough.
So January will fade away and February take it's place. Happy New Year everybody! Whoops we have used up a month already. I hope some of your resolutions are coming to fruition and others, well sadly not all resolutions become facts. But as your northern winter passes slowly by remember you are a month closer to Spring. May all your hopes and dreams for the year ahead come true.
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