A sad week

Due to being busy with Christmas commissions and this week being a bit all over the place, I've not been terribly active on the birding side of things. My little bike accident mentioned in my last post was the result of just hearing bad news, the loss of an elderly gentleman, a good man and the beloved partner of one of my dear friends. He was lost to cancer, that horrid C word that brings so much misery to families across the world.

I thought I might share this poem, written by another of my friends, Cheryl Bray.

Dear Cancer,
You’re persistent and foreboding, that I won’t deny
But it’s time you learned, because of you, Man will not die.
That’s right, you heard me loud and clear, you won’t kill mankind.
That fate will come from something else
That survival will not find.
For what you don’t appreciate, is that you cannot hide
It almost makes it easy, your attention seeking pride.
You make yourself so common that we’re learning every day
Learning how to kill you, how to stop you making way.
For all your work in weakening the people that you strike
There are others working tirelessly to stop you in your fight.
Nobody’s a victim of the sickness that you spread,
They carry proud the chances to help doctors stop you dead.
So remember Cancer, when you hit the undeserving brave
That the others bearing scars and loss will dance upon your grave!

 "The undeserving brave", such an apt description of this chap and indeed any cancer sufferer, he was beautiful inside and out and forever remembered in our hearts. A great bird lover too, I was so pleased to observe the flocks of Redwing and Fieldfare that alighted in his garden just before my little bike accident. I was so glad to tell him about them in person before he departed this world.

Rest in peace good sir.