life is like a box of chocolates (or an ice-cream cone)

I have been looking for something to help me get back in the groove to blog again. I miss it. I miss the interaction. I miss looking for things and writing down little bits on pieces of paper here and there. I miss not having a record of what is happening around me of I am thinking, doing, what music I am listening to and what books I have to read.

No promises but taking little steps to getting back on the blogging wagon.  After all, every child hates to disappoint their parents.  My mother checks my blog every night, to no avail, so also for you Mom.

Reading this late the other night was exactly what I was looking for. 

Life, for the most part, inevitably becomes routine, 

the random confluence of timing and fortune that configures its components all but forgotten. 

But every so often, I catch a glimpse of my life out of the corner of my eye, 

and am rendered breathless by it.

Jonathan Tropper, Everything Changes

Sorry if I still seem to be stuck on the rollercoaster theme but this is exactly what 2014 is proving to be.  

As you get older do you become more accepting of death? When you are close to death and suffering does it make it easier?

How can someone be here one day and the next day gone and nothing stops for a minute?

Death and dying have been on my mind. Not in a morbid way - almost in a good way as I try to make sense of what life is all about. I always imagined for myself a slightly dramatic death (a bit like Steel Magnolias).  With time to tell everybody I loved them, notes to leave behind, make a patchwork quilt, have my cupboards all tidy, garage cleared of collectables that are only precious to me - that kind of thing.  

In the last couple of months I have witnessed my step-dad dying after a year of illness. He was luckier than some but had many weeks to agonise and come to accept and be at peace with the fact that he was dying. It did give him time to say goodbyes, for his family and friends to be there for him but what was it like for him? On the other hand on Friday I heard of the death of a good friend of a friend who went off to pay his usual tennis game on Thursday evening and died. Just like that. No time to even worry about the mess in the garage.

“That's the thing about life; everything feels so permanent, but you can disappear in an instant.” 

Jonathan Tropper, This is Where I Leave You

“And ice-cream cones,' she says. 'What is it with you and ice-cream cones?'

He licks around the edge of his cone as he considers the question. 

'I guess no one ever eats an ice-cream cone at a funeral, or a fire. The Red Cross doesn't drop ice-cream cones into third-world countries. If you're eating an ice-cream cone, it's just very hard to believe that things have gone completely to shit. That there isn't still hope.” 

Jonathan Tropper, One Last Thing Before I Go

I like this Jonathan Tropper, never heard of him before but have just ordered "This is where I leave you". I will let you know what it is like.

As for now - 30 degrees outside and summer has arrived in Cape Town. I am off to sell wine at a waterpolo tournament but am stopping in at The Creamery on my way for a Cookie Dough cone!!

So through all the sad things and hardships around at the moment, isn't it so amazing that there are still so many things that "render you breathless" and that a simple thing like an ice-cream cone is good for your soul.