Requiem ; 2013

I left school early, started to cook at age 13 and never did Latin , I am also not a religious man, just a believer in a higher power, (even if that be a Sith Lord for us Jedi warriors), but I have learnt some things in my years and have to say that some words and phrases in Latin just mean so much, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuat luceat eis. Requiescant in pace” sounds so eloquent when spoken correctly.     

It means “Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.”

I began 2013 as I do most new years, looking back at who we had lost in the previous year.

Occasionally throughout any year you are surprised at a name, a celebrity who passes, a famed writer, a journalist or just a movie star you adored decades before. You just sometimes never expect them to go like the rest of us. But each year I check which of the famed we have lost as the ages are now creeping very high for a number of them. Despite their years of denial and thanks to plastic surgery, Hollywood sports some of the youngest looking 70 and 80 year olds on earth.

As 2012 ebbed into history I also surmised in several columns what would become of a year ending in a number thought by many to be tainted. Unlucky, scary, superstitious or just cursed thirteen never did have a good ring to it.

In the end 2013 will be a year easily remembered by me as the year I lost my mother.

Celebrity she was not. Young looking at 73 she was not. A sweetheart to the end she most definitely was and the only person on the planet who could lift my spirits on a down day with a single laugh.

There’s a saying about, “life throwing you a curve ball”, well 2013 was definitely that, I never saw this coming at all and I swung hard and missed.

When I was a child I hated sports for they made me feel silly at time just like that. You swung hard and missed and there were always those in the group that would laugh, smirk and giggle at your failure.

I somehow feel the same now.

While I know no one is laughing at me or smiling this time, I feel stupid for not having seen events escalating to the point of the final drama. So many others saw it. Why didn’t I?

I was closer to my mother than most. I’d wake and feel compelling love for her and have to call to see if she were all right. I had done exactly that just a few days before her death. Why then did I miss this catastrophic planetary misalignment that captured the soul of this angel and robbed me of my mother.

Where was I ?

What was I thinking ?

What was I doing ?

I’ll never know.

Life does not have a Hollywood ending and Hallmark can’t write cards for the state that I’m in or for the months I’ve endured since August 26^th.

One comfort of 2013 will be the looking back at others who passed this year and were welcomed at the gates of Heaven along with my mother to keep her company. She would have been happy that Mark “Chopper” Reid was there, for she loved his books and crime stories. She always had a thing for the underdogs. Joining her too were Paul Walker, Peter o’Toole, Nelson Mandela, Tom Clancy, Bill Peach, David Frost, James Gandolfini, Richard Griffiths, Roger Ebert, Bonnie Franklin, Margaret Thatcher, and President Hugo Chavez to name but a scant few lives lost to us this year.

And so we find ourselves at the ebbing tide of yet another period of 12 months, 52 weeks,  365 days that changed history for some us, lead to joy for others, confirmed success and financial freedom for others and for some just 365 more days to tally of yet un-extraordinary lives.

What of 2014 ?

Well what of any year?

In the 45 years I have been here I’ve heard much of time travel, space exploration and the ‘future”.

So far I’m a little underwhelmed at the speed of change of it all. All I can see as far as advancements is that Hollywood has become very clever at kidding us into believing that everything will be all-right in the end.

“Live each day as if there is no tomorrow, enjoy the family and friends around you today and be thankful for every day you awaken upon this earth.”

That last sentence was a cliché string of nonsense by the way.

I can no longer live like there is no tomorrow.

There are no ‘good”  tomorrows for me since Mum died.

Just painful awakenings that remind me that she is no longer here.

Enjoying of family and friends around you sounds so easy; life, distance, commitments and money make it so much harder.

And as to being thankful on a daily basis, well put it this way, I’d thank anyone who could return the center of my life back to me for at this moment I’m a few degrees off my axis.

There’s a ‘black hole’ where my heart once sat and it’s slowly imploding the rest of me into a void of oblivience.

What will 2014 bring for me? To be honest I don’t much care.

I now just see life for what it pretty much is, ‘sans’ the rose colored glasses of my youth. Life is a day in, day out battle for survival, cash, riches and fame. But for the rest of us, it’s just another day to go to work for those who have the power, cash and riches, so that we can serve them until the year in which we are destined to expire.

And so one more year ends and another begins ! Whoop de doo…..

Margaret Ann Maree 17.5.1940 - 28.10.2013