There's nothing like the death of a friend to make you fully contemplate your own mortality.
I am still trying to process the fact that a friend and colleague Christine Fogg died last week and will be buried tomorrow.
I keep thinking about the last time we were together - just a few weeks ago over coffee in a West End cafe.
We talked about a text book she had written and I had contributed to some years back. She wanted to pick my brains, she said, about possibly reworking and updating the book. Would people be interested? Would people mind being contacted to ask if they still thought there was a place for the text?
It was very much a conversation about the future. What I didn't know was just how little future she had.
Christine was dying of cancer. I have since learned that she didn't want people to know but I keep asking myself if I should have noticed something, if I should have asked her more about how she was travelling.
I totally get that she wanted people to treat her as they always had and not the women with cancer. I hope I wouldn't have done that but could have been a friend or could have lent a hand.
But Christine did things her way. She also was thinking of others right to the end. I got a call within hours of her death. She'd left a list of people to notify and it would appear little notes on how she knew each of us.
I love her for that. So today's picture was taken in the historic Dutton Park cemetary near my home this morning. It says to me that I should try and concentrate on the bright and colourful memories like the flowers and not on the bleak and sombre.
Clearly that is what Christine was telling me she wanted.
RIP.
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