Better To Remember And Be Sad

Christina Rossetti wrote a poem which finishes with the lines:

'Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.'

In recent years I have lost a number of people who were very special to me, both friends and family members. There have been times when I have thought my heart was completely broken and it could never be mended. At the moment I have the heaviest heart because I have lost the best friend I ever had and the only person who has ever really understood me. I have wept and I have been angry with the world for taking her from me.

Yesterday a friend gave me a card which said 'I know I can't take away your pain and sorrow but I wish more than anything I could'

At first I thought 'Yes, so do I' but then I began to really think. This much pain can only be felt because there has been a tremendous amount of love first. To lose the pain would mean to forget that. I don't want to forget. I want to remember all the things we shared, happy or sad, the times we have laughed together and done really stupid things or even the times we have cried together because things were bad. I wouldn't even swap the rare arguments we had. The disagreements were a sign we cared enough about each other to say when something wasn't right, and deep down we always knew that.

I began to think of all the friends I have lost and then started to focus on how they all enriched my life and helped to make me who I am today. If I was introduced to someone tomorrow and told that they would be a wonderful friend but I would lose them in a year and my heart would break, I would still choose to have that year with them because I truly believe that the joy and love gained from real friendship is worth every bit of pain that may follow.

So, I have to disagree with Ms Rossetti and I say:

'Better by far that you should remember and be sad' because it means that you have been lucky enough to have had something truly special in your life.

Brontë Parsonage Haworth - Where A Soul Finds Its Home

This is the Brontë Parsonage. The place my soul calls home. My beloved Brontë sisters lived here with their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë. If I don't visit here once a year I feel homesick.

It was here my heroine, Charlotte, wrote her wonderful books. If you have not read Jane Eyre you have missed the greatest novel of all time in my opinion. I have wept over the pages of this book so many times. She breaks my heart anew with each reading. Every time I pick it up I still find something I missed on previous occasions, such is the depth and detail of this wonderful story. Charlotte's own life experiences shine out from her novels and I can feel and identify with so many of them.

The whole area is perfection. To wander out on the moors, to explore Top Withins, to watch the Brontë Waterfall cascade down is the greatest freedom and frees the heart and spirit. It is a glimpse of heaven on a sunny day and gives a strange feeling of comfort even on misty days. To explore Top Withins on an overcast, winter's day in torrential rain is to feel Emily's Wuthering Heights in all its oppression.

The Parsonage itself is a place of history and pilgrimage. Within its walls is the settee upon which Emily breathed her last breath as tuberculosis took its dreadful toll on another of the Brontë girls. The painting Branwell painted of his sisters is haunting, yet filled with love. You may find you pause on the stairs to gaze at this for a long time.

In the upper room, stop to view Charlotte's dress and you will be amazed that such a tiny, delicate woman could have lived through and coped with the experiences she had and still be a strong-minded, independent businesswoman. Charlotte is my absolute heroine. When the world becomes too much for me and I feel that I cannot go on, I look at all she withstood and came through and she gives me strength to continue and to try to be a far, far better woman than I am!

And, as for the hero of the piece? Well .....Reader, I married him.