My Daughter's 50th - My Friends early Death.

M had a weekend of 50th birthday celebrations with friends & family - presents, cards, cake & fizz. Just as it should be. A good friend, T, died suddenly last week. He was only 58 & will be missed. It's yet another couple of footprints on the road you travel through life.

There are celebrations & rituals, joys & sorrows. No life is exempt from great pain or great joy.

A birthday is expected a death may not be. A life can end in a whisper of time without notice or warning. The thing is you have to learn to deal with both. There is no alternative. Stuff happens. You can't ignore it & hope it will go away. What matters is how you deal with it.

The shock waves of a death, in whatever circumstances, travel wide. Many people can be touched by one persons life. The trick, on your journey through life, is to leave behind good memories if you can. I'm not necessarily a big fan of Eulogies. I have been to funerals where what was said bore little resemblance to the life of the person I knew. I'm thinking of another friend R who would have been very surprised by his own funeral.

If we could just live thinking about both siezing the moment & really living it, but also doing something to benefit others. Being kind. Being thoughtful. Really listening & trying to understand what someone is trying to tell you. But we are all wrapped up in our own small lives & horizons - The minutiae of our own mundane existance.

Then the moment is gone forever & we can never recover it. We can rarely go back & put something really right. Life moves ever forward & the wrongs we do, big or small, are there in the memory & can't be erased. Better to act mindfully, with thought about our actions & the consequences.

I will miss my friend. He was a joy to be with. He made me laugh. We put the world to rights. I will remember him with good memories. I hope someone can say that for me when I go.