Thanks to everyone who lit a candle for Colin on Sunday. Here’s the images of candles people shared with me. And the reason it took me so long to post after Sunday was because I’ve spent the better part of the last few days trying to figure out how to get all the photos into one image, because I’m that useless with computers. But I didn’t feel like posting four separate blog entries for each individual candle.
Stupidly, we neglected to take a picture of our own candle. So, there you go.
The holidays continue to be a time I look forward to with Emma and Noah while dreading them because of the memories of Colin. Being here in the house – which is what we would normally be doing with the impending holidays, but now with the added weight of the impending lockdown – can be such a catalyst. The kids have once again found the photo albums and pictures of Colin at Christmas are in vogue. I don’t mind seeing them, but I wish there was a way to prepare for them. But how do you prepare for that?
And it creeps up in other ways. I was reading some old blog entries a few days ago. A friend with whom I’d lost contact found the blog and basically learned in one go about Colin’s birth, life and death, so I went back to see what I’d written. I found the entry from a year ago about how hard it was in 2019, putting together the end-of-the-year obituary at work, thinking about Colin while I wrote a few last words about Doris Day and Eddie Money.
“Interesting,” I thought. And then I was here in my study on Thursday, putting together this year’s list of the dead. I was about halfway through and then it hit me again, just about as hard as it had gotten to me in 2019. And I can’t tell you why. It’s not like writing about Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery or Terry Jones makes me think all that much about Colin. But there it was.
So, I guess we just keep on remembering. Either with a candle or a photo album or a surprise segue during obituary writing. Again, thanks everyone.
<3