Thankful Thursday

My Sister-in-Law, wifely partner of CJ, is due to arrive at any minute on this absolutely glorious late summer evening.  It's been a really full day.  I took CJ down to the ferry terminal earlier this evening so that he could get some photos of the incoming ferry. Partner-Who-Drinks-Tea will pick him up and bring him home.

After I'd deposited CJ I drove home over the moor and I was gripped with an awareness of the enormity of the stillness, silence and vastness that can envelope tiny insignificant me in this immense world.  On an Island so often beset by the noise of wind and sea, the silence this evening was overpowering.

I sat in the car and listened to the silence and thought.  I thought about Thursday; about Jaz and the worry she and Mark have just gone through as they will every time she's unwell; about being asked to help a friend to do something which gave me a sense of usefulness; about a friend who is desperately unhappy; about a cat who is part of the family and who is now in pain with his cancer and who's life will end on Monday; and about the fact that about 240 million people lost their lives in conflicts in the last century.

I sat in the car looking at the vastness of the Island and the sea which I could see surrounding it and I realised something curious: that the emotions created by the loss of a special family cat are just as significant - perhaps even more significant - than the loss of 240 million people whom I never knew.

So why is this a Thankful Thursday post?  Do you know I'm not really sure. 

However as I sat there looking at the vastness and listening to the silence I knew that, for whatever reason,  I was thankful for being alive and for being able to have those thoughts.