10 Years After

I had planned on writing some sort of poignant words today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Paul’s death but now it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do so I’ll just write whatever comes out.

What I need to be do is to remember him, to ponder  enough to keep his memory alive.

Diabetes monitored most of Paul’s life. Diabetes is in the top ten causes of death currently for the human race, it sits at around number 9. But the overall lack of understanding of insulin as a hormone possibly underlies a good majority of the remainder of the deaths. 

In China and India almost 30,000 people die every day, in the USA it is around 8,000 and Australia about 500. Worldwide around 166,000 people die every day. That puts it as 7,000 per hour, 115 per minute and around 2 for every second. That is a lot of loss and it never stops. Millions are impacted each day and life goes on. 

Like anything else it is the manner in which we react to death, loss and the guilt associated with it that matters.

Life goes on and it will continue to thrive on Planet Earth until the planet no longer exists.

We are all part of a huge magical experience. 

A hydrogen atom is about 99.9999999999996% empty space. Put another way, if a hydrogen atom were the size of the earth, the proton at its centre would be about 200 meters (600 feet) across.

But there again the quantum rules that apply to the whole universe also apply to our bodies. 

I can’t even get my head around the definition of quantum so for now I’m going to assume that anything is possible.

Back to Paul.

I had 32 years to spend with him. He was an integral part of my life. Being his father impacted me to a huge degree.

We had a designated phrase for Paul which he created, god knows what he was thinking about when he coined it. The 2 words are Storm’s Epiphany. He may have looked at himself as “Storm”, I’m not certain but he did once say that if he had a son and a daughter he would name them Storm and Epiphany.

While I was in the centre of the storm I didn’t have enough space to view it clearly and cohesively. For me it was a bit like the rides I never went on as a kid at the Royal Melbourne Show that spun around so fast that you got stuck to the wall and held there by the movement and other forces at play. Like almost everything in my life I did my best to make the most of what was happening. There are opportunities in pretty much any circumstances.

I have many intimate memories of Paul. If I open the causeway in my mind they just start gushing out, randomly with no time sequence involved. I often dream about him. I reckon I think about him at least once every day, sometimes for a fleeting moment and sometimes long enough to wonder.

I often wonder what life would be like if he was still alive. I never wonder what my life would have been like if he hadn’t been part of it. My relationship with Paul has contributed greatly to who and what I am today.

I’ll get through today unscathed. As I said earlier life must go on and it must go on in the best and most meaningful way possible, being open to all of the magic, the wonder, the discovery, the adventure and even the moments of anxiety, loss, anguish and confusion.

One of my goals is to finish each day a bit better and a bit wiser than when it started. Somehow Paul contributed to this desire and for that I thank him.