It was the death of a colleague that brought about life changes for myself. The platitudes of others that were well meant, struck a chord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Too young to die.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Had so much to live for.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Never see his grandchildren grow up.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018His dreams would never be realised.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I mused on these for weeks, long after the funeral. My life sounded wonderful to an outsider, a mortgage free house, a caring wife, and two grown up children. I had married young, and had to take on huge responsibilities, from the start. My first born, Charlie, nearly arrived before the wedding, Charlotte just two years later. With a growing family, my own dreams had been locked away. I\u2019m not saying I resented my life, I\u2019d brought the problems on myself, I knew that. It\u2019s just that I didn\u2019t want to die like Richard, whisked away before he found his happy place. As far as I could see, there were three choices: –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keep my thoughts to myself and carry on as usual. I knew that since I had my revelation that life was passing me by, this would still make me unhappy. So this didn\u2019t really seem much of an option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Try to enhance my current existence with lifestyle changes, do what I wanted to do, at least some of the time. I still would have responsibilities, of course, but. this seemed to be a better path to take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third option was the most obvious and the most terrifying. I could give everything up, and leave. There could be no turning back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found that the only person who would be able to understand was my wife. We both knew the sacrifices we had made, the bucket list items that never got off the ground, the dreams and inspirations that had been buried. We needed to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Susan was sitting on the sofa, when I arrived home from work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Can we talk?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Yes sure, actually I\u2019ve been working out how to talk to you.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Is there something on your mind?\u2019 I decided to let her go first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We need to change our lifestyles. Ever since Richard\u2019s funeral, I\u2019ve been thinking of all the things he didn\u2019t achieve.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Go on\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I think we need to complete our bucket lists before time runs out on us.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew Susan and myself often thought alike but this was uncanny, I began wandering if I\u2019d left any travel brochures on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018And\u2019 she hesitated, \u2018there\u2019s things I want to do on my own.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Such as?\u2019 I muttered, wondering where this was going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Oh, you know, Line Dancing, holidays with the girls, cinema trips, I know you hate them, but I want to live a little.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked at her and laughed out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Of course you should do all those things and more.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She embraced me. \u2018I knew you would understand.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We chatted on through the night, making dreams become reality. Neither of us wanted to go down, without a fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was the death of a colleague that brought about life changes for myself. The platitudes of others that were well meant, struck a chord. \u2018Too young to die.\u2019 \u2018Had so much to live for.\u2019 \u2018Never see his grandchildren grow up.\u2019 \u2018His dreams would never be realised.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1129,1154],"tags":[752,1165,191],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1129","category-feb-2024-crossroads","tag-always","tag-choice","tag-there"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-vD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}