Crumbling....Snuffing

Allotment globe artichokes for Saturday lunch. My husband calls them Global Artichokes.

Delicious  cornflower view from kitchen window at house of dear friends on a rainy Saturday night,

and smoked moules as part of delicious Chinese meal she cooked for us.

Today felt like another Saturday  - we celebrated my nephew's birthday with him and his family in a  rain drenched Bristol.....and watched my 2 year old gold haired great-nephew help him and his brother blow out silver candles on the chocolate banana cake I made last night - and decorated this morning with lots of tiny chocolate stars courtesy of Cadbury's Milky Way.

And tonight I'm awash with sudden tears...remembering being 36 myself when it was all ahead of us  - that careless certainty of shared  tomorrows.....

It's not just words now -  my husband sheds them like snake skins, their meanings pale as faded ink....but another skin is falling away - the one that tells him the difference between sad and tragic - as if his heart is always ready and raw - a child crying in the street, an ambulance siren in the distance, gunfire on the news, dropping a wine glass......it crumbles him into tears...

We are driving in slow traffic. I feel his anxiety rising.

It's always like this round Stonehenge, I say. It's not an accident.

But he's sure it is. He crumbles.

What if someone has been killed? he says.  It must be terrible - their life suddenly gone  - just like that. 

He makes a grabbing and snuffing out gesture with his hand.

Is that what it's like for you? I ask.

In some ways, yes, he says.

A sudden snuffing-out for someone - a tragic death. How do you live a half snuffed-out life though, one candle blown at a time, without longing for the whole one - or for none at all?