A lot has happened since the last blog; a wedding for which the sun shone, the end of life for a little ray of sunshine and so much more which feels so insignificant when there is a death.
But yet out of sadness can come the opportunity to do something that matters and so maybe the insignificant does count and can contribute to something good.
The Chatty Café Scheme has been set up to reduce loneliness and get people talking and we know that the experience of bereavement can make people extremely lonely. Lives change dramatically, routines slow down, priorities change and suddenly two becomes one or three becomes two and life is just an existence.
Sometimes offloading to a stranger can be strangely therapeutic and often just the simple act of a friendly face (a smile) can get you through another day.
The Chatty Café Scheme has been set up to reduce loneliness and get people talking and provide welcoming spaces for people living with bereavement.
The reason this blog is titled ‘just’ is because last week we heard the poet Jackie Kay reading a few of her poems and one stuck in our minds ‘April Sunshine’, it described her parents who both ended up in hospital at the same time and how to the outside world they were ‘just an old woman and just an old man’. This resonated because lots of the people who sit at Chatter & Natter tables may look like ‘just an old woman’, ‘just a disability’. ‘just someone of a different race’, ‘just someone that looks upset’ but they aren’t – they could have been a brain surgeon, an actress, they might have changed the world or they might be someone kind, warm, funny. They might be going through a tough time or the best!
When awful things happen in life sometimes we need solitude and silence but when the first steps are taken to reconnect with life, we hope that a Chatter & Natter table will be there to provide a bit of solace.
The Chatty Café Scheme will be supporting Alder Hey Children’s Charity in memory of a boy whose ‘joy is never to be forgotten’
