Lost and Found...

So, one of our cats went missing. We were eating dinner on Tuesday evening when we realised that no one had seen him since Monday afternoon. Now Mo will quite often disappear for hours at a time, but not usually overnight, so we were puzzled and a bit concerned, but fully expected him to be there the following morning…but he wasn’t. 

We checked the shed, garage, spare rooms but no sign. Me, being me, decided he had drowned in a nearby dyke while trying to catch a frog. My husband thought he’d got into an open vehicle, his favourite thing to do, after catching frogs, and been driven off to goodness knows where. My son, on the other hand, was convinced that he’d crawled into one of the sewage pipes being laid nearby, and been sealed into a hideous fate! Suffice to say that we were all really unsettled by his absence. Every time the phone rang I expected it to be the vet saying a dead cat had been brought in and his microchip said it was ours - and sod’s law demands that we had more cold calls yesterday than in the past six weeks!

The power of the Book of Face!

By the afternoon I started to get really upset and posted a photo on Facebook, asking for help to find him. Then I started to cry and found it very difficult to stop. Every sad emoji that my friends posted started me off again until my eyes looked like peeled tomatoes. All of this over a cat. Okay, a very cute cat, but still a cat.

The thing that disturbed us the most was not knowing what had happened - was he lying dead somewhere or, worse injured and unable to get home? Was he locked in a garage that may not be opened for weeks? Had he been catnapped / shot / poisoned? Its amazing what your imagination can do to fill a void of uncertainty if you let it. All of us felt in limbo. Every time our other cat walked past the window we jumped and we were constantly expecting to see a black and white body under a hedge. My son felt sick, and even my appetite was unusually absent.

I'm home!

Then, at a little after 10pm, in he marched! Miaowing, demanding food and drink as if nothing has happened! He was very thirsty, and I suspect he’d been shut in somewhere but, other than that, he was fine. He ate some food, had a drink and went straight out again! Obviously not as traumatised as us!

Just before Mo walked in, we had been watching the news about the terrible Grenfell Tower fire in London. There were people being interviewed who were desperately searching for their families who lived in the tower block and hadn't heard from them all day. It put worrying about a cat into sharp perspective. Whole families were missing - brothers, sisters, parents, children. Horrible. Hopefully most of these people will be found safe and well in the various emergency centres, but undoubtedly some will have perished in the blaze. Again, terrible, but a definite, if tragic outcome. 

Every year in Britain there are thousands of people reported missing - over 130,000 in 2015-16. Whilst most of these people return home very quickly, 2% go missing for more than a week - that’s 2600 people! How do their families cope? Living with the dichotomy of hoping for the best and bracing themselves for the worst. I simply can’t imagine what that is like.

Real people, not just statistics...

Anybody who saw the recent Britain’s Got Talent can’t fail to have been moved by the Missing Person’s Choir - a group of people with missing family members, using a public forum to get their message out there in the hope of some new information. Seeing their photographs projected while the choir sung turned them from being statistic into being someone's child or parent.

I wrote recently about picking up the pieces of your life after the loss of a loved one (It's Okay to Laugh,too), but I am in awe of those people who have suffered a bereavement but not a death and yet carry on with their lives. I couldn't focus on anything yesterday, and it was just my cat that was missing. Enduring that feeling of uncertainty for any length of time over a family member or close friend is unimaginable. If you have time, check out the Missing People website, type in your area and have a look at the photos - maybe you have seen one of these people and could help reunite them with their family. How amazing it would be to help someone enjoy an 'I'm home' moment.

Only letting him out on a lead from now on!

It's Okay to Laugh, too...

So difficult to write

This time three weeks ago I was writing my brother-in-law’s eulogy. I still don’t know why I offered to deliver it - as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to suck them back in - but it was something I felt I wanted / needed to do for my lovely sister and her children. When I was writing it, people said to me, ‘Don’t forget the funny bits’ which seemed at odds with what I was trying to say. We were saying goodbye to someone we loved, continue to love, and there’s nothing remotely amusing about that. But the truth is Rod was funny - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not so much - and writing about his life needed to reflect that. So I included some ‘funny bits’ and people laughed. In the midst of a sad and solemn occasion, people laughed about him setting a dead tropical fish in plastic resin and pushing a brush down the chimney because it got stuck going up, covering the house in soot in the process. Later, at the ‘party’ as his youngest granddaughter called it, we continued to laugh at our memories of a man who always put his family first. The human spirit at its finest. 

How do we do that? We just carry on, going to bed, waking up, eating, drinking, laughing, regardless of how we feel inside. I remember a really surreal moment the day my dad died, standing in the fish and chip shop at lunch time. My dad had died less than twelve hours ago, and we were buying fish and chips. But, we needed to eat, and nobody felt like cooking…needs must! I remember my mum saying the exact same thing as my sister is saying - ‘I’ll be alright’ - and it’s true. In the face of bereavement, loss, tragedy, people are, in the main, alright. There’s no alternative really, other than curling up in a ball and dying yourself, but the human spirit prevails and we carry on with our lives as best we can. Yes, we are sad at times and anniversaries  and special days may be sadder than others, but we shrug them off and find that we can actually enjoy ourselves again. The trick is not to feel guilty about it.

Never feel guilty for having fun!

Events in Manchester and London over the past couple of weeks have shown people’s ability to rise above tragedy and show that life carries on - the coming together of thousands of individuals for the concert in Manchester on Sunday, the man who tried to return to pay his bill at the Borough Market restaurant he’d eaten at on Saturday night and the countless millions carrying on with their daily lives, metaphorically giving the finger to those extremists who would try to disrupt our society with fear and hatred. Humour is the best antidote - how funny that one of the heroes of Saturday night, injured trying to protect others, was given a magazine in hospital, ‘Learn  to Run’ - hilarious!

The best example of the human spirit

The human spirit - a truly marvellous phenomenon. I have written before about how it is okay to be sad(here), but we also need to remember that, whatever life presents us with, it’s also okay to laugh!

My daughter and her friends certainly know how to laugh!