11:11am - Ten Years Ago

At 11:11am ten years ago to this very day, Europe witnessed the last solar eclipse of the twentieth century.

I remember the day very well.

I was in the garden with my Father and next-door neighbour and we were trying to see it through a home-made viewer (in layman's terms - a bit of paper with a hole in).

As you've probably guessed. This trio of eclipse viewers didn't see anything special.

So, it was off to work I went.

It's not just the eclipse and its build up that will forever make me remember that day.

On that morning my Aunt left this world.

I came home and was met with the news as soon as I walked through the door. My Dad was on the phone speaking to someone and my Mother intercepted me before I walked in the room. She didn't want me to hear the news by eavesdropping the telephone conversation.

It was a weird feeling.

My Aunt had been in a nursing home for a while and I foolishly and naively didn't visit her as often as I should have. It's easy for me to say this ten years on but I have felt like this ever since that day.

She was always there for me when I was growing up. I just assumed she always would be. Now, I've spent a decade without her presence in my life and it makes me glad for those twenty years.

My only surviving Grandparent died when I was three or four. My Aunt became all four rolled into one. I remember a few occasions as a kid contemplating asking her if I could call her 'Nan'. I never did.

She was as good as, though.