This week has been a particularly difficult one for me. It was this week three years ago, June 26th to be precise, that I and Craig’s mother learned of the fact that our little boy had a brain tumour. Every year at this time the memories of that day, of that moment when we were first told, comes rushing back and threatens to smother us once again.

I don’t know what it is about the mind that betrays us like this. None of us needs to be reminded of the darkness in our lives; none of us need to relive those moments of terror that scarred and changed the course of our futures. But our mind will not let it be so. We remember. But why is it so easy to remember the heartache and the sorrow and so difficult to recall and FEEL the warmth of the good times? Why is it that the pain in our lives seems to shape and mould us more immediately than any of the good. Or maybe it just feels that way.

Like I said the pain comes easy; the pain is always there just brimming underneath the surface, waiting for a break so they can spill forth...And the breaks come often. The happiness and fond memories are buried deeper it would seem, often hidden.

I’ve just recently completed the first draft of a book I’ve written about my son and his life and it has taken me nearly 5 months to do so. My experience of writing that book is that the suffering, the torment and the sheer agony of what he and we went through, presented itself so readily for writing that I found it impossible, in the beginning at least, to write or even contemplate the warm beautiful memories that filled our lives together. As I would sit there in front of my laptop getting ready to write, my mind would throw up dark memory after dark memory. The beauty of my son, his wit, intellect and his charm and all the wonderful times that we were so extraordinarily fortunate to witness and be a part of with him threatened to be choked out by the darkness and the endless pain.

My reason for writing the book was to celebrate Craig, along with telling the story of his life – with all its ups and downs. But here as I tried to write it I found myself consumed by the misery. I wanted to record only the hardships, the injustice, and the grief. I had an affinity with despair and anguish; they were the only truths I knew. So that’s what I did. I wrote about the darkness. But what I also found was that as I progressed in my writing, as I walked through the shadows and those dark places week after week, crying through it all, light began to come through. In writing and reliving the pain, I purged myself of something that would have me otherwise twisted into some horrid bitter thing. In facing my demons, I overcame them.

Remembering our departed loved ones, for who they truly are, is our only duty. We cannot fail them in this. We must not allow the darkness to cloud out their light. Perhaps that darkness should only serve as the perfect backdrop to showcase how extraordinary they are. We must learn to live through the darkness that will forever pervade our lives but assign it only its real value. We must not make a monster of it. We must garner strength from the luminescent beauty that our departed loved ones have already shone and continue still to shine into our lives from their new place.

We owe it to them to remember them well; to bring them back out into the light and to smile when we think of them. They are extraordinary people and deserve nothing less than to be remembered as such.