NOVEMBER is no doubt the darkest month of the year. It’s not just that the winter is truly here with such short days, no, but October often still lingers after the fading summer whereas this month hasn’t the sense of expectation that December is bursting with.

As well as that November is the time of the year when we remember the dead - those gone before us. I actually like the opening days of the month when our minds think of all the Saints and all the Souls. Someone said to me once ‘not everyone is a Saint but everyone has a soul’ – it’s a lovely thought that can bring solace on a dark, dank November day.

Over recent weeks I was a little bit involved in a Pastoral project here in the parish. A Book of Remembrance has been placed in both of our Churches. The books are in effect diaries with 365 individual pages - one for each day of the year. On these pages are written - on the date of their death, the names of hundreds and hundreds of parishioners who have gone to their eternal rest. Anyone visiting the churches on any given day can look at that day’s date and recall those who passed away on that very day. It’s a recent initiative so the majority of the names are of family and friends who died in maybe the last twenty or thirty years. As time goes on and more and more names are added the Remembrance Books will be a veritable treasury of memory and those reading can recall those generations who made us who we are today. It’s a lovely idea and fittingly the Books are in situ in this month of November.

I’m not one for maudling self-pity but God knows I was so weary last week - not upset or depressed about any one thing - little or large, just weary and kind of washed out.........

© Evening Echo