People never die if they live on the lips of the living..........

                                   "You were the summer of my life."
                             Song heard everywhere the summer of 1976.
                              The year you were born                                                 
                                           http://youtu.be/3cKflAGjIHc

      My lovely son, here you are, that playful cheeky grin on your face, looking into the camera. It wasn't taken by me, and I forget who did, but I know I wasn't at that particular family gathering for my sister's Silver Wedding, in 2005.  I had Post Viral fatigue.
I seem to have only been writing in this blog about you with 3 month intervals recently.
   I pondered on this for awhile.........
There may be several explanations
1. I go to see the grandchildren fairly regularly, and so love being greeted by their beaming smiles.
2. I have been in so much better health the last 6 months and have been taking up my various activities once more, like the Choral Society, the Anglo-French group and the small group of us who have a French book club.
3. I have been painting, and made some Christmas cards from one of my watercolours. (I know you would have been pleased by that!)
4. Visiting friends, far and near, going for walks, then having your widow and her hubby of two years, (married in December 2011) come and stay once more from Dallas in November.
 And, dare I say it?  A sense of my life being re-formed from the smashed up pieces into which it was broken and catapulted 7 years ago last September.
`
   I have to say Matt, that, at times, I can feel a tinge of guilt, as though I've left you behind........
That is not the case, but to be able to really enjoy my life as it is now, is a completely new experience.
     Yes, there are the times when the reality of your loss overwhelms me at an instant, unexpectedly, when the urge to take myself off to a safe place for awhile is strong. Whether it is in the garden, or just going for a walk, or reading a book, and shutting the door to the outside world for a bit is necessary to recover.
  You will never be forgotten, and we talk about you all the time, smile and remember you.

Having the grandchildren has brought back a lot of memories of when you were a baby, then a toddler. It was such a long, hot summer in 1976, beginning in early May and finally ending the drought in early September.
I pushed you out in your pram for miles, around the area where we lived, in Hampshire, and sometimes took a sandwich to the nearby small park, along with a bottle for you. We lived in a two bed-roomed flat on the first floor, with no inside staircase and an outside balcony. It was quite a feat to get the pram, all the accoutrements and you to the ground floor. I had to do it in stages. Leave you safely in your cot or the playpen, when you were older, and take the pram down first. Remounting the two flights of stairs, which were enclosed, but on the outside of the building, to bring you down.
  Then I had to do the whole thing in reverse coming back up to the flat.

The thing I remember most vividly about that summer, was one of the songs constantly on the radio. It just summed up how I felt about watching you grow and develop into a chubby blond happy baby.
      When I got to September and October and beyond, the title words came to mean so much more to me.

      You were indeed, the very summer of my life. never to be forgotten days of sunshine, glorious sunsets, baby snuggles and first smiles, baby chatter, and teeth.
                                   One of a long line of "firsts"

I still have your baby shoes, and your baby shawl and bonnet in which we brought you home from hospital.
And now we have your last pair of sandals, your Australian bush hat and didgeridoo, alongside your wedding shoes. The whole of your life being lived in between.
       

 Late summer 1977

   I read a quote recently..........
                          "People never die if they live on the lips of the living"

                                     And you are always on ours.