It was Benjamin Franklin who said the only two certainties in life are paying taxes and death. I've been on this planet for 43 years now and I can attest to the first one on an almost daily basis, but lets not dwell on the amount we all pay. The second one not so often but recently its hit home a little bit that we are on this planet only for a finite time and that eventually we all leave this mortal plane.
In the past few months I've said goodbye to a few people. Some of them close to me, some of them people from my past and some I had never actually met in the flesh, but knew of through other people. I'm not going to get into specifics with most of them but I would like to acknowledge two. Roy and Andrea.
Now these two came into my life at very different times. Roy when I was a young child and Andrea when I a fully grown adult. Roy was the parent of Ricky and Gary Haresign, two friends of mine who lived in the same small village and attended Gipsey Bridge School alongside me and my siblings. The parents used to take it in turns taking us to and from school, on sunny days that would mean walking the mile and a half or so but on those days when the weather was bad and lets be honest we're talking about the weather in the UK so it was a regular occurrence, we would pile into Roy's car and he would drop us off in whatever old banger he was driving at the time, and my memories of this time are always accompanied by the greatest hits of Michael Jackson which he seem to listen to on loop. I haven't seen Roy in a long time though I do still talk to Gary and Ricky, and recently found out he had passed away after a long battle with cancer.
Andrea was in short a character, she was born in Sheffield and moved to the Boston area where she became a landlady of a local pub and knowing the clientele that Boston has to offer first hand I can attest that you need to have a bit of character about yourself to survive. I met her very late on in her long life, when she was already in her late 80's but I developed a bond with her during the Covid years when I was a nice neighbour and as she couldn't get around as much as she used to I used to go get her shopping and do little favours for her along with some of my other older neighbours. I spent alot of time with her after that helping her, listening to her old stories about the way things used to be. She passed away not long ago after a battle with dementia and a severe stroke.
Why do I bring these two up in particular? Well I met them at very different points in my life when I was two very very different people but they made an impact on me,
I've touched on my own mental health issues in the past and I don't hide the fact that I nearly did the unthinkable at one point. Luckily for me I got the help I needed and with a lot of support from my friends and family but it hasn't stopped me thinking about what would have happened if I'd of done it. How would I be remembered, what would pop into peoples head when my name came up?
I've never been that spiritual in my life, and I've often taken what be classified as jokey attitude to the after life. Me and my friend Charlene have a running joke that when we get to hell we'll save each other seats I have no definitive answer of what awaits us , no one does, the truth is we don't have a clue and we won't have any idea until it's to late for us. Maybe we'll be reincarnated, I did read a theory the other day that the light which we are supposed to head towards when we die is actually us coming into the light of our new life by being born. Interesting idea I think and one that kept us amused at work for a shift during a slow day. Maybe we have one life and that's your lot, maybe we spend the rest of eternity waiting for the end of the universe, and with Donald Trump around that seems to be coming ever closer by the minute.
So why write this post? A little bit of self reflection but more to the fact is to say to everyone cherish the life you lead you only get one.
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