This one…
This is a letter to someone I never got to know very well. Many many times I wish I had…I think we might have been good friends in our retirement years. We only knew each other because of our children.
Today I sat surrounded by babies who had been abandoned for many different reasons, all of them unfathomable in our current western world….but you would have understood wouldn’t you?
They sat on my lap, they snuggled into my shoulder, they allowed me to bath and feed them. You would have loved them too…your loud laugh may have frightened them at first, but they would have come to love you and know your heart very quickly.
I looked out the open doors and windows across smog covered rice paddies and wondered if you would have loved them like I do…I like to think you would…but life changed all that….snatched you away from all of us.
but what is unseen
We talked just briefly before you left about what you wanted to do with your hard earned retirement years. I think we would have done some things like this together…..probably driven each other mad, but we both would have loved the giving and the satisfaction of loving the unloved…
I miss the friendship we may have had, and as I stood at that open door with little M in my arms I could not stop the tears falling for you, for your lost chance, for myself and my chance to have you as a friend, and for M who will spend her whole life struggling to be accepted…..
I cannot explain why but today I miss you Annette…….and so wish you were here with me….
