Mum is in pain and in hospital. It’s hard to watch. When there’s nothing you can do to fix it or change it. Or really help her to bear it.  Watching someone you love, suffer is heart-rending.  Tonight on the way home from the hospital on the long train trip back to Mum’s unit, I finished reading Caroline Jones’ book “Through a Glass Darkly”.  Her story of love and grief with her father’s last illness and death. Maybe it’s not such a “suitable” book for me to be reading at such a time as this.  Or maybe it is.  I picked it up at an Op Shop recently. Caroline is searingly honest about her journey of grief and doubt and pain. But this quote gave me great comfort. “I’m noticing that there is solace in a moment … when I can savour beauty once again. It lifts a load, calling me into present time, away from regret and anxiety.” While walking through the little park near to Mum’s little unit, I took a photo of these beautiful blossoms, revelling in their exquisite, dainty beauty. She talks about the “joy and suffering of life in equilibrium, or in ebb and flow; the contradictions not seeking reconciliation but each suffusing, permeating and giving meaning to the other.” I don’t know what’s around the next bend in the road. None of us does. Platitudes and cliches won’t help. But I can still hang on to the certainties of God while I experience the uncertainties of life swirling around me.