In the Midst of Life

At the National Memorial Arboretum for a Blipmeet today with Landscape Artist, Technophobe, Loosecanon, Chrispybox, Mrs Chrispybox, StevenG and Mrs G.  It turned into quite an emotional morning.  Some of us had particular memorials to visit as they were personally very important, some of us had quite intense emotional responses to the empty spaces waiting to be filled with names on the big memorial containing over 16,000 names of members of the Armed Forces who have been killed as a result of conflict since the second world war.  So many different memorials to so many and oh to the children...

This shot was taken through the slit in the centrepiece memorial through which a ray of sunlight can flow on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of every year to mark Armistice day. The black statue at the far side of a stretcher being carried high, the poppies "Lest We Forget", and people of today whose lives we have to treasure in their own joy, pain, peace and despair.  So much pain around us.

A day not to be forgotten.