Don't waste life stressing over the small stuff
That's always been my mentality anyway but even more so this week. I saw the headline on the local paper from the bus on Monday, "baby hit by lorry in Dunkirk", which immediately made my blood run cold because you put yourself in the parents' place. Found a bit more out about the story later on in the day .... a dustcart was reversing or turning and ploughed straight into a woman and her pushchair on a zebra crossing. The baby had severe head injuries and later died in hospital. The woman was OK, just in severe shock, and must have felt even worse (if that's possible) because she was just looking after the baby (not clear if it was a friend or the granny - the newspaper kept changing the story).
This was all bad enough but it gets worse. For the last few years, once a week there's been a group of us who go to a local pub for lunch and it turns out that it's the 18-month-old kid of the pub owner. I was in there with Mike on Tuesday and he wasn't there, but we didn't think anything of it. He's a really nice guy, we saw his wife when she was heavily pregnant and he had drawings on the wall and stuff. As if that hasn't already destroyed enough lives, the driver of the dustcart was just a kid too ... 19-years-old and he's only had his driving licence for 2 months. I don't know how you'd ever manage to come to terms with doing something like that, even if it was an accident.
It certainly makes you look at your own kids, however naughty they're being, and think, just make the most of it, don't waste time on all the silly arguments and stress, let's have some fun and some cuddles and live each second like it's the last. I've still got to work out what to say to the dad the next time we see him too ... but I doubt if he'll be back at work for a while yet.