Remembrance of things past

With the last year firmly behind us, by mid-January I am prone to look back, especially as I grow older. I suspect the pandemic has intensified this trend. But although I have had my challenges, starting not long before the pandemic, I can only count myself lucky. Lucky, certainly, that I have not lost anyone near and dear to me to COVID (and have not contracted it yet myself). But lucky, also, in having a wonderful family to support me all my life. Most especially, how lucky am I to have a caring wife, always by my side, for more years than I am allowed to mention? And so my thoughts turn to Sonnet 30:

When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;

Then can I drown an eye (unus’d to flow)

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

Everyone should be so lucky.