Remembrance Sunday

Not far from where I live is a memorial to six young Canadian servicemen whose plane crashed in local woodland in 1944.

Joss and I often pass the spot when we’re out walking, and I wonder about the lives of those young boys: the lives they lived and the lives they might have lived had it not been for the tragedy that stopped them in their tracks.

Each year, a simple ceremony is held at the memorial on the anniversary of the crash. Wreaths are laid in the deep shadow of the trees. And today, on Remembrance Sunday, passers-by had tucked poppies into crevices of the dry stone wall behind the commemorative stone.

This afternoon, I committed to an exciting trip early next year. Then I spent some time working on a special event I’m designing for this Christmas. During the course of the day, I made many small, inconsequential decisions: what to wear, what to eat, where to walk the dog.  And I dealt with various boring chores.

And through it all - the thrilling stuff and the dull - I felt immense gratitude that I’m able to make those unimportant decisions, lay the big plans, tread the hamster-wheel of daily routine. Gratitude that I’m alive to experience joy and sorrow and the mundane. Gratitude that I have been gifted with a chance of which so many, many others have been robbed.

And I left my poppy in the wall.

Comments

[Rosanna]

Beautifully said.

The so-called mundane, the ordinary IS the extraordinary, hiding (or not), every moment, in plain sight.