Compassion, Spring 2021

Spring 2021 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 4 Reflections from the Editor Dear Friends It’s the second week in February. Looking out of my window I can see the wind blown snowflakes fluttering past and my red car now snuggled up in snow. I’m very glad to be sitting by the fire, biro in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. I have my editorial to write today, and then what? Apart from feeding myself, sticking the washing in now and again and putting the groceries away when the van comes… what else is there? (Forget housework for the moment) Sometimes I feel like the miniature daffodils in a pot on the patio, struggling to surface. But they also give me heart. Despite the cold, despite this Lockdown, despite everything, to see them poking their heads up through the icy soil, they show me that spring is not far off. Spring has more than one meaning for me though, and I suspect, for many of you. March brings the anniversaries of both my children. In the early years of my bereavement I hated Spring coming round again. Nature was alive but not my children. It has taken me some time to come to terms with that, but I have. It has been all too easy, these difficult days, to sit and watch the television, letting my mind wander, unable to meet up with friends or family. If I’m not careful I can drift into a low mood, my negative thoughts taking over… And then I become aware of what is happening. I am not my thoughts, I exist outside them. I can choose to change them. I get up and move around and decide to..… it doesn’t matter what. What is important is that I am AWARE of my thoughts and that it is in my power to change them. While I’ve been writing this, my tea has gone cold, so I’m going to pop it in the popty ping. This is Welsh for microwave: ty (pronounced tee) is house in Welsh, an oven is like a little house that you pop things in, so it becomes a popty, and a microwave, of course, is a popty ping. Now I’m back in front of the fire with my tea warmed up, and I take up my biro again. I’ll always be grateful to those who held out a hand to me when I was first bereaved and I didn’t think I could go on living without my daughter, and then my son. But I have survived, and what is helping me most now, is listening to and being there for those more recently bereaved, albeit at this strange time in a zoom meeting or at the end of a telephone. It helps me as much as it helps them. I expect many of you, while we’re housebound, have been taking the opportunity to sort through your things. When I was going through my files, I came across this poem I wrote shortly after my son, Robin, died, and I know from what many of you have told me, that this will resonate with you too. Gina Claye