Australia Day and onwards

In years gone by we had a long weekend for Australia Day, no matter where in the week the 26th fell.  The 'celebration' mainly consisted of an announcement of the Australia Day awards and a cricket match.  These days we have a day off on the day and it seems that more people are involved in the celebration.  Here in our little town a breakfast is held with local awards given and a bit of a concert and some competitions for best decorated tables, hats etc.  A couple of years ago my then 23yr old received the local Young Citizen award, but refused to go to accept it as she doesn't like to be in the limelight. My youngest accepted it for her.  She sponsors 4 overseas children while still studying and we had fundraised and she had travelled to Haiti to visit her Haitian child and 2 of mine.  This was before the earthquake and still she came home with the realisation of just how bad things are there and how far above their reality is our standard of living....even on a Centrelink income we are RICH in comparison.
It is hard to imagine living conditions that must prevail after the quake.  All of our babies survived as far as we can ascertain.  I feel very guilty that I don't write to them but will attempt to change that this year.
Anyway Australia Day is passing with no acknowledgement here....we have all slept in and only plan to leave the house as both girls have shifts at their work.
Happy Australia Day!
The last few days have been full of reflection on life, death and the need to do NOW and live NOW and be NOW as that really is all we can be sure of.  This always comes to the fore whenever we are touched by death and trauma but more so when we are confronted with the reality of a sudden, tragic death of someone vibrant and full of life and so, so young.  We all process this in different ways, we think of our loss, we think of how the family will cope, we think of it in terms of their loss, we imagine our own family coping should it be our death and we are thankful that we are still here.  And we realise we have no answer to the WHY?
All we can do is try to live OUR life in the best possible way, doing what we can for people and with people to enrich their lives and in doing so enrich our own.
That is my promise to myself and my loved ones.
Have a great day, Australia.