Remembering those we love

It's been more than 5 years since my mum died but I still have to catch myself sometimes thinking "I must tell her..." Most of the times I am quite happy having conversations with her in my head - she is so alive there that I almost don't feel like she is dead, even though intellectually I know this is the case - but the oddest things can set off a wave of realisation that she is truly gone. Like this week's football ladder (reproduced below).

OMG - not only is St Kilda at the top of the ladder but they haven't yet lost a game this year. Zaida (my mother's father, my grandfather) will be so excited... oh... umm... that's right. Zaida is dead too. He died the year before my mum.

Nominally I still barrack for St Kilda but with my mum and grandfather gone, it just isn't the same. I can just imagine the conversation with them, getting so excited over St Kilda's success, wondering when the team will fall flat on its face this year, hearing for the umpteenth time about St Kilda's one and only grand final win - on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar (with so many Jews praying for them, how could they lose?), the rabbi breaking the rules and spirit of that solemn day to announce from the pulpit that St Kilda had won by a point over Collingwood...

I have trouble believing in an afterlife but I do believe that a little bit of the souls of those we loved remain with us as long as we remember them. So in my head my mum is drinking weak white tea with my grandfather who is having a mug of warm water and milk and they are having fun filling in the tip sheets for the next game of the season, wondering whether 2009 will be the year that St Kilda reigns again.

Rank	Club	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn	For	Against	%	Points
1	TeamSt Kilda	5	5	0	0	555	262	211.84	20
2	TeamGeelong	5	5	0	0	598	402	148.77	20
3	TeamCarlton	5	3	2	0	581	457	127.14	12
4	TeamWestern Bulldogs	5	3	2	0	520	471	110.41	12
5	TeamPort Adelaide	5	3	2	0	480	468	102.57	12
6	TeamEssendon	5	3	2	0	441	447	98.67	12
7	TeamAdelaide	5	3	2	0	400	435	91.96	12
8	TeamCollingwood	5	2	3	0	476	442	107.7	8
9	TeamHawthorn	5	2	3	0	490	494	99.2	8
10	TeamSydney	5	2	3	0	459	473	97.05	8
11	TeamWest Coast	5	2	3	0	447	488	91.61	8
12	TeamKangaroos	5	2	3	0	362	421	86	8
13	TeamBrisbane Lions	5	2	3	0	401	488	82.18	8
14	TeamRichmond	5	1	4	0	401	523	76.68	4
15	TeamMelbourne	5	1	4	0	355	508	69.89	4
16	TeamFremantle	5	1	4	0	394	581	67.82	4