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From swimsuits to snowsuits, sliders to wellies, it’s like the seasons are reversing, because I feel like I’m right back in winter. And they’re not the only ones turning back the clock, because I’ve spent this weekend with my head buried inside a memory box I made when I was 12. Inside is a musty copy of Arthur Ransome’s ‘Swallows and Amazons’, a withered purple thistle, and a fuzzy-little-lamb-soft-toy (who’s had a long old winter with limited reading). This weekend marks 15 years since my lovely Dad passed away, and opening this box is how I pay him tribute. Everything in it is significant - the book for his love of stories, the thistle, his proud Scottish roots, and the little lamb, his term of affection for me.

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But what’s most significant about this box is not its contents, but that I made it when I was twelve, and didn’t reopen it until my twenties. Back then, my little world couldn’t digest a pain so big, and sometimes I wonder if I made this physical box as a way of literally packing-up my grief. As writer CS Lewis says, “it’s easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’ But, as time ticked on, I stayed stuck, because in suppressing pain, it so easily dominates - feeling sad, when you should be happy, seeing darkness in the world, when it’s full of light, feeling absent, when you were made to be present.Ìý

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The Biblical book of Ecclesiastes says: “For everything there is a season.’ It says there’s a time to laugh and cry, dance but also grieve. In other words, every emotion demands its moment. So, at the age of 20, I finally opened it. And as I stared down at the things inside - yes, it hurt (a lot), but it weirdly filled me with joy, because out of the sadness, I began to feel gratitude for Dad’s life. And in looking back, the ability to move forward. Zoe, I believe pain isn’t meant to be kept in a box forever. Because as the weather flits between spring and winter, warmth and the freezing cold, I’m reminded that sometimes you have to go back a season, if only to make the most of the next.