Sadness

Perhaps I'm feeling melancholic today, and therefore seeing ordinary things in a sad way. My uncle J who is the closest of all my Mum's siblings to me, is very ill, and undergoing chemo which is making him sicker than he already was - and with Xmas coming combined with the knowledge that people you love aren't well a kind of blueness is hovering around me.

Whilst waiting at the butcher's for the freshly slaughtered turkey I saw so many sad people. School finishes around 12pm here, and loads of kids were walking home alone or with friends or were being picked up. One boy, alone, was walking rather oddly. On closer inspection I realised he was wearing a pair of black leather brogues that looked huge, and I can only assume from the laboured way of walking he was actually wearing shoes that weren't his - maybe they were his fathers or brothers - which then made me think maybe his family is poor and they share shoes because they were not typical kid shoes. Then another boy was walking way ahead of his mother or grandmother - hard to say but she looked too old to be his mum. And the woman was watching him ahead but she seemed so distant and so removed and was slightly talking to herself and looked a bit confused. Then a group of kids together walked silently, seriously without much interaction. And then another young boy, who walked in a way that only a slightly disabled person can, waved to an old woman waiting in her doorway, and smiled to himself so happily and contentedly. When he passed me I could then see he was also probably slightly mentally disabled as well and I realised he seemed the happiest of all the people I'd just seen.