22 years, I don't know where the time goes. I didn't think for a moment I would get through 22 hours, or 22 days, but some how 22 weeks become 22 months and whether or not I know where it's gone becomes irrelevant because 22 years have past since waking that awful morning in Montreal to find my little boy's lifeless.
People say time heals but that's not what it does; nothing heals that big a loss, and life never returns to what it was before. It's not possible. What time does, eventually, is bring with it a numbness, a resigned and reluctant acceptance to helplessness and fragility of our existence. It doesn't matter one tiny bit how many tears I cry, how many strategies I use to avoid or deny grief, because, at the end of the day death is insurmountable, indiscriminate and inevitable.
What I have finally learned from your precious life having been cut too short, is that life is fragile, and precious. It is never promised or guaranteed. What you think you have today, may well be snatched away before tomorrow even arrives. So do not put off those calls to loved ones, do not hold back on chances to catch up with friends and family, embrace new challenges and experiences. LIVE every single day of your life. Because there is only now, and it is an unparalleled gift, the gift of life.
This is what your beautiful and precious (short) life has taught me Johnny Starrs. That life is now. This is the lesson that we all ought to have learned from our loved ones who have been taken too soon, treasure the people we have and the life that we are living. And please, do one thing for me today, pick up the phone, call your mother, or your son or your sister, or a friend. Take 10 minutes to have the conversation you've not made time for in a while. Don't let more 22 minutes pass, or they WILL become 22 days. Make the call, and after it, when you are happy that you did, send a little happy thought, or prayer out into the universe for my little boy, Johnny Starrs, who travelled to heaven 22 years ago today.
Nite nite my sweet little angel, Mummy loves you xxxx