Briefly Remembered

"I didn't realise until I remembered him, that I had forgotten him," says Anna Blundy, in this week's Grazia, about the father she lost at nineteen. Grief is a strange emotion. So many of us go through our every day existences, grieving for someone who has died, or, as is pertinent to a close friend of mine - someone who hasn't yet been born. I grieve for someone alive but absent. Last night, curled up under a blanket with a stinking cold, stoically caught through blatant over-excess last weekend, I found myself in front of Sacha Baron Cohen's "Da Ali G Show". It was Borat's exclamation of "Wow-wah-wee-wah" (his general greeting for a bit of fine totty), that reminded me of KP. Once again I saw him, as if it were yesterday, in the build up to a big night out. I would totter into the room in my glad rags, freshly made-up and organising my handbag. He would stand from reading the paper, the crinkles in his cheeks breaking into a smile and he'd throw his arms out and shrill "Wow-wah-wee-wah" - Borat style. And I would glow from his attention. Ridiculous, that I should remember him by this. But it's the little memories that pop up from time-to-time that bring fleeting miss-you-moments for a past that will never become future. And I didn't realise until I remembered him, that I had actually forgotten him. These days, the glimpses are brief and I get on with my life. I haven't seen him in six months and it's been over for eighteen. Forgetting is nature's coping mechanism. So it must be difficult therefore for a fellow Sister who's grief is kept alive every month. And even though it's different to grieve for someone you've never known rather than someone you have, it's still grief and anyone who has experienced it in any form, understands, even if it's too painful to discuss every day.