Dealing with loss

I’ve just read Jo Carroll’s very moving post about the passing away of someone she has known since childhood. She has expressed it beautifully and as I read it, I just wanted to keep saying ‘yes, yes – that’s just how it feels.’

In my last post, I touched on the fact I’d lost a very dear friend recently to cancer. It happened when I was in South Africa, something I’d been dreading since I booked my flight several months ago. Unlike Jo's, my friend was not very old, but the battle with cancer had been going on for nearly four years. In the last months, it became clear that it was a matter of time - and I knew it. Nevertheless, I  haven’t felt able to write about it for two reasons: one being that I know the family wouldn’t want anyone to put two and two together – I , like Jo, have to and want to respect their privacy and that’s increasingly difficult on the internet these days; the other is that I really could not find the words to say how I felt, except that a very important light in my life has gone out.

Jo’s post is so moving; she writes with such perception, I’d like to link to it here. Please read it.

For myself, this photo was one I took in South Africa on learning the news. I was given some time to be alone (thank you, Moira), so I wandered round these tracks taking it in - dealing with the 'dislocation' as Jo puts it. This image, with its rails disappearing into the distance, felt fitting.