Things change. In life. In love. In the day to day.
It’s inevitable.
You could be wandering along, quite content, when something happens to make you consider where exactly you are in the universe.
To abuse an old cliché, question what it’s all about?
It could be a near death experience.
Or the passing of a friend.
A feared for redundancy come knocking, or new job offer realised.
Maybe meeting someone who could turn out to be the long lost love you always craved.
Wondering how you missed them, journeying down life’s highway.
Or it might simply be an age thing.
You wake up one day, wonder where time has disappeared.
But it needn’t mean you are unhappy. No. Just that you have had time to reflect.
On your own, while shooting the breeze with friends over a meal.
Or during some illicit drinking into the wee small hours when truths are shared more readily than is wise.
But it could all be so cathartic, not least approaching the end of the year.
You may lucky and bask in the glory of a smug life.
Perhaps you ride that wave of contentment, and think life is just kick ass good as you take your eight to nine hours sleep a night.
Even then, it’s surely worth a pause, just to look around.
Stuck in Edinburgh because of the snow this past fortnight, I know my mind has been left wandering about all sorts of things.
Each bus journey reminding me of days gone by, good and bad, the changing face of the city with every new designer’s fad.
From my first illicit drinks as a cocky, fearless school kid to the latest fun filled sessions lasting long into the dawn.
The birth of friend’s children, to the weddings of those from school.
And, of course, there’s never any avoiding that one, inescapably cruel rule.
So I’ll be standing at Mortonhall Crematorium tomorrow, bidding farewell to another man gone far, far too soon.
Grateful that before his passing, he paused, took stock, drank in the view.
Stopping just long enough to say his long goodbyes.
Only then, quietly and with dignity, exiting the room.
