CASUALTIES OF WAR

One of the more unfortunate casualties of the recent incursion into our home of our tiny interloper and our subsequent declaration of war against the little blighter, and after which we did the - admittedly long, long overdue - de-clutter and chucking out of the rubbish and "contaminated" stuff, was my mother's last birthday card to me, written in a very shaky hand during the summer of 2013, in which she took a moment to thank me for everything I'd done (Which is, incidentally, to my eyes at least, not very much at all, but there you are).

In the normal, everyday world, of course, this sort of thing would have been chucked out long ago, but with my tendency to over-sentimentalise things and just pile them up to be dealt with later, a dusty pile of old birthday cards can occasionally gain an undue importance in the great scheme of things as they sit there, unremembered and not bing thought about until long after they ought to.

After all, these things are just "stuff" after all, and the real thought mattered when it mattered and it's the memories that really count, don't you think, and not the bits and pieces surrounding them…?

Of course, it was those very bits and pieces that made me think about it that afternoon, of course, and the wrenching sense of guilt as that particular card joined all the others in the black bin bag will stay with me a while, I suspect, along with my wonder that our councils insist upon us using such bags even though they rip and tear for the simplest of reasons.

I looked at the pile of bags that our suddenly very necessary clear out had created and wondered whether the bin men would take any or all of them, given that we might have exceeded our fortnightly "quota"…? I had, of course, miscalculated which collection week it was the previous week and accumulated more outside already than were strictly necessary, but our post-apocalyptic cleansing seemed to have created some kind of a mountain of the blessed things. I suspected that I might just be making a trip to the tip the following weekend when I ought really to be attacking phase two of that very same clear out.

The "mum" thing was a very poignant moment, however, and, along with some of the other "precious things" that had to be discarded as "casualties" our our own private little war, it did serve to remind me that having stuff brings with it the responsibility of looking after that stuff, otherwise things like this will continue to happen. I already suspect that my precious collection of old comics that languish in an as-yet unreachable dark corner of the attic will no doubt already be lost to the unseen marauders, which will cut me to the very quick given that some of that was being "sort of" counted upon for my retirement fund.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that, instead of it getting easier, it's felt far, far tougher this Christmas than last to be completely without parents as I now am. Somehow, I suppose, I'd rather expected last Christmas to be tough, and so it proved less tough than I imagined it would be, but with time being allegedly such a great healer, and this being another year on, I think that I had come to believe that it would be a breeze, so, rather naturally, it turns out not to be.

This year, however, I suddenly find myself looking around for my little rituals and routines and finding that they're simply not there and, whilst I was never the biggest fan of the season, I'm finding that I really am starting to miss all of those daft little annoyances which both got in the way of and contributed to yet another disappointing Festive Season for me.

Hang on to your memories, my friends, because sometimes they're all that you're left with.