After the Rain

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain!

Rain.

It's so often used to depict sad and sorrowful times. There are lines in many songs which talk of the rain clearing and sunny skies returning as a metaphor for pain and sadness leaving and joy returning. One of my favourite songs is Rainy Days and Mondays by Carpenters but it talks of rainy days getting the singer down.

However, I think the rain gets a bit of a bad press. I can understand why it's used in this way but there are so many good things about the rain. We need it for obvious things like making plants grow, but it has a beauty all of its own. Without it we wouldn't have rainbows or that very distinct feeling and smell around the place after a really heavy shower. Sitting in the conservatory when it rains has been something I've really enjoyed lately. The sound of the rain on the glass roof is amazing!

I recently watched a documentary in which someone said that a dying friend's wish was to feel the rain on his face one last time. For many of us, particularly if like me you wear glasses, that can often just be a real nuisance, but I hope it will make me think twice about it and appreciate it a little more when I'm next wishing glasses came with little windscreen wipers attached!

That same documentary ended with a song that I've had on repeat for the past couple of weeks. It's a song called After the Rain by Dame Shirley Bassey. It's nothing like her usual style; it's very soft and quite delicate, but sad. As I often do with new found songs, I did a bit of digging around to find out what it was about and discovered that the writer, Richard Hawley, wrote it about moving through different seasons in life, how things come to an end but there's always another door and having the strength to carry on from one period to another.

This has been the toughest of weeks for my family. But even in the middle of the roughest storm there are always things to be thankful for. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder. In a year that I earmarked for making memories, it will be those very things that will continue to help us to laugh and to carry on to the next season. 2023 has not been the kindest year so far, but it is often in the darkest moments and hardest trials that the biggest lessons are learned.

The rain does get a bad press. But at some point this next week when it rains (if I plan to cut the grass it inevitably will) I really want to just get outside and feel it on my face and appreciate it in a different way. I suggest you do the same.

See you next week.