Goodbyes

Weather. Steamy

Candas

Tough times.  On Tuesday I heard about the deaths of 2 special people who had a big impact on me over the last 10 years.

It's difficult to take in news like this at a distance as I can't attend their funerals to pay my respects, share memories with other people who knew them, and check how the people close to them are managing without them.

So yesterday I decided to get cards to send to their families and friends and to light a candle for each of them. None of us are/were religious but they both lit up their circles in their own inimitable ways.

Seemed straightforward but it hasn't been.  We got a little narrow gauge train to our nearest big town (David quite rightly thought this would have been a joy for one of them) and went into every shop that sold cards.  But it seems like the Spanish only send out congratulation cards.  Every card had a happy cartoon animal or balloons on it, couldn't even find a blank card.  Never mind, there's always funky pigeon.  But turns out my laptop has given up connecting to the Internet and I'm struggling to do this on my phone, let alone choose, buy, write and address a "remote" card.  So I will have to fall back on email :-(

As for the candles.....every other place we've stopped in there have been churches everywhere.  But not here.  We tried the main town church when we were out yesterday but it was shut (!) and the only other one we found only did electric candles which I turned my nose up at.  So last night we walked along the prom to the local town and found the church there.  We crept in to find we were in the middle of a service.  We waited until the communion bit and sneeked over to the nearest set of candles.  Electric again but after much whispering over what value coins we were holding (it was very gloomy) i dropped in 50 cents as quietly as poss and about 5 lit up!  Very non specific and unsatisfactory.

But one advantage of being away on holiday is that I have had time to recall many happy shared times :-)

Very fond goodbyes to Gary Lewis Dove and Chris Dillon,

You both lit up my life