Back in the early 1970s Jim Croce sang about Photographs and Memories. A few years later he died in a plane crash (what is it about musicians and aeroplane crashes?) and a Greatest Hits album was release bearing the same title - poignantly appropriate.

This week has been replete with both photographs and memories. In part this was quite intentional, but it was also a natural and inevitable part of having all our kids together and capturing the opportunity to relive, reflect upon and re-enjoy family events and legends together - perhaps for the last time?

On Wednesday Sue and I spent the whole day just with Tessa, Callum and Mitchell. We cannot begin to describe the intense pleasure that we experienced in 'just being' all together, but also in watching the kids revel in each other's company and enjoy each other as interesting (and mature?) adults who like being together. 

Many hours were spent gathering a lifetime of photographs (and even a few slides!) together from all corners of the house - a suitcase full here, a box full there, an envelope or two stashed away strangely without logic or reason. There must have been many hundreds, if not a thousand or more - old & new, large & small, crisp & fuzzy, colourful & grey, familiar & surprising. They were poured over, comment upon, laughed at, baptised with tears, and then added to piles or discarded. The result was a severe culling, a large crate of rubbish and multiple labelled envelopes and document wallets of loosely categorised images. Fantastic.

Now we need to do the same for all the images on disk taken since we bought our first digital camera more than 15 years ago (when you inserted a floppy disk into the camera body and could store up to 20 photo images!).

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Over lunch, we took some time to openly and directly talk through some of the realities for all of us as end of life approaches for Sue. It was a lovely time of openness and freedom to explore, ask questions, imagine scenarios, toss in ideas and fearlessly (but obviously not unemotionally) talk about death, dying and what it means for everyone. There was much hilarity and irreverence mixed with the tears.

This also presented a wonderful opportunity for Sue and I to affirm our confidence that through Christ our bodily death is not 'the end' and therefore is to be celebrated as well as grieved. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippian church, "to live is Christ, and to die is gain". To the physical, world-focused person, death is a disaster for with it all earthly comforts, all material accumulations, and all worldly hopes and dreams are lost. But to the Christian believer, death is a joy and cause of celebration (as well as a legitimate cause for grieving), for it is the end of all weakness, misery and distress.

It was all very timely, healthy and releasing. 

[Stay tuned for The Week That Was #2: Blessed Assurance]