I dedicate my song today to three people who celebrate their birthday today, plus the heavenly birthday of my nephew, Jamie Brown.
The three earth birthday celebrants are (1) Margaret Lansdell who lives in Manilva, Spain. (2) Jacqui Grinsell who lives in Grangemockler, Tipperary, Ireland (3) Kieran Meagher who lives in Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Ireland. Enjoy your special day, Margaret, Jacqui, and Kieran.
My thoughts today are especially with the heavenly repose of my nephew, Jamie Brown, who died in 2004 at the early age of 26 years. Today would have been Jamie’s birthday. Jamie left behind his father, Alan, his mother Susan, brother Lee, and sister Evie. Today, we give thought to all the Brown and Forde family who mourn Jamie’s early departure from this life. My deepest thoughts naturally go to my youngest sibling, my sister Susan (Jamie’s mother). It was never meant that a child should ever die before their parents. A mother’s love cannot be measured in days, weeks, months, and years; it is eternal. And there is no greater loss than the pain felt by a mother whose child dies before his time. Rest in peace, Jamie, and a happy heavenly birthday from all your family who loved you.
My song today is ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply. This song was recorded by Australian pop duo ‘Savage Garden’. It won the 1997 ‘ARIA Music Award’ for ‘Single of the Year’ and ‘Highest Selling Single’ and was nominated for ‘Song of the Year’. Written by bandmates Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones, the song is a reworking of a song called ‘Magical Kisses’ that the pair wrote together during the recording of their debut album. The song reached number one in Australia, Canada, and the United States. In November 2019, the song was added to the ‘National Film and Sound Archive’ selection of recordings. The songs added to the list provide a snapshot of Australian life and have "cultural, historical and aesthetic significance and relevance".
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To be truly, madly, and deeply in love with anyone is to be connected to them in thought and feeling wherever they are. There is no greater feeling in this world than to be physically, mentally, and spiritually in tune with your lover, your spouse, and soul mate, or indeed your parents or your child. There are no words in the dictionary to describe just how much you love them; no matter what you say, you still finish up loving them more than that. It may sound trite to hear a 78-year-old man say that at the first and last moment of my day, I think about my wife, Sheila, and how much I love her, but it is true. As soon as I switch on this old brain of mine, my mind starts to wander, and I immediately think “What’s Sheila doing?” I know she is not perfect (nobody is), and can be a handful on occasions, but surely that is why God gave me two hands? And, so it is with my children, as I wonder how each of them is faring throughout the day. Whatever their circumstances happen to be at this moment, I cannot prevent my thoughts from thinking about them. I cannot stop being extremely proud of all of them, or always worrying about the difficulties that one or the other of them might be presently experiencing. Similarly, with my six brothers and sisters, my family is, and always has been my main orbit of concern. They are my world!
As all relationships grow and thrive on the trust and honesty of the two people in it, it is vital that truth never gives way to the convenient telling of lies, whether great or small. Both trust and honesty go hand in hand, and as like the happiest of couples, one cannot exist without the other. It is their unification that gives meaning to the relationship’s purpose and value. As many a person in a failed relationship has discovered to their sad cost, the truth does not cost anything, whereas a lie can cost everything!
All people who love truly, madly, and deeply will hold a little bit of jealousy in their heart occasionally, and simply being confident enough in your relationship to truly express one’s fears or doubts to your partner will prove sufficient to clear things up and alleviate any unnecessary worry one may have had. Where love exists, so can jealousy. It is often an additional condiment in any romantic relationship, and like salt is to food, a little can enhance the savour, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening. If the relationship is to survive long-term, it needs to provide a sense of emotional and practical security for each partner in it. While interests need not necessarily be mutual, equal status and long-term aims and direction for the future partnership must remain a vital part of the couple’s shared blueprint. When this is not so, and a power imbalance is evident, the continued relationship, however loving and positive has hit a downward slope which heralds ‘collision ahead’.
Interests within solid relationships need to be both shared and individual, but however much a couple love each other, it is unhealthy to completely wrap oneself up in each other, and it is unwise to consciously come to totally depend upon each other. For when that day comes when one of you will remain to grieve the loss of the other, the dependant survivor will discover that while they were able to take on the world as a team, and beat them hands down, now they are on their own, they find it impossible to break open an egg without scrambling the contents. They are more likely to feel that they cannot survive in the world without their lost partner and soul mate. Indeed, many bereaved spouses symbolically ‘wear black’ for the rest of their days. Having spent the better part of their happy marriage telling each other daily that ‘they could never live without the other’, they naturally come to believe this, and when it happens, and the day arrives when they have to live alone without their lifelong partner (now deceased), their mind follows the ‘irrational belief’ they have held for almost a lifetime, and the brain instructs the bereaved body to feel ill, depressed, and die if needs be!
We can all live without anyone else in the world when needs must! We may not want it, we may not like it, we may hate the very thought of it, it may wound us deeply, even savagely, we may cry endlessly, we may hurt forever with the depth of our loss and the huge emotional hole left in our hearts. We may experience all the above reactions from our body, and tell ourselves “I cannot stand another minute without him/her”, but while all the above is undoubtedly happening to our mind and body, the one thing we are indisputably doing is ‘standing it’; not wanting it, or liking it, but ‘standing it!’
I have always believed that in each happy union between two people, that although ‘love’ provides a solid bedrock that is strong enough to fundamentally withstand any experience heaped upon it, that it is trust and honest communication, independence and interdependence, a capacity to forgive and forget, and a willingness to always try to understand which constitute the four cornerstones upon which all sound marriages and loving family homes are subsequently built.
And when that painful day arrives that we lose our loved one to the other side of the green sod, and we wonder ‘Where are you, now?’, we will know ‘truly, madly and deeply’ that they are where they should be, where they have always been; with you!
Love and peace Bill xxx