Doctor's Notes: Now is the time to get our life in order

Some of you, possibly most of you, will have thought the same.

For once there is time, for once there is no excuse - time to get sorted.

Locked down, locked out but not shut down – we can do all the things we have been putting off for years.

The curtain rail that’s coming off the wall, the loose hinge on the door, the weeds in the garden that have been there so long you could call them perennials.

Now, I am not a handyman, so much of what could be done remains undone, and will remain so, long after the lockdown has finished.

But there is always something and our something is in the small desk at the top of our stairs.

Open it up and there are hundreds of photographs. I would call them ‘surplus’ as most are filed away in albums or stored in the computer.

The simplest thing would have been to bin them all, but no! There is always the off chance that some important photographic memory may be among them.

The weather has changed, the temperature has dropped, the rain has come – time to stay indoors and sort them out.

But that is where the test starts – what I discard Ann wants to keep, what I want to keep she wants to throw, you see we were taking turns.

Photos evoke memories but we have different memories, some that we want to hold on to and some we don’t.

We ended up with two piles – one large which I thought was amazing as they were for throwing, and the other, a smaller one, for filing away. Sounds good, doesn’t it, but where shall we keep the file? And the big one has ended up in a black bin in the garage – just in case we change our minds.

Yes, this is a time for sorting out the photographs - but what about sorting out our lives?

How we live, how hard we work, our children, our relationships, what we have said and done, what we have left undone. What’s it all about, this life of ours?

What have I made of it, will I leave this world a better place than when I came into it?

For all the wrong reasons we have been given time to ‘sort’ ourselves out.

In the Smith household the photos were difficult enough, but everything else is much more difficult.

We looked at those pictures – some are holidays and some record other events in our lives.

Most of them are over 25 years old.

People often say to me that I haven’t changed, but the photos tell a different story - I have.

They are a reminder that time has passed and time passes, middle age has become older age.

Note that word ‘older’ because we are in our mid 70s and not yet old.

How we fool ourselves!

Whatever time is left we must try and sort out if we can, realising that we may not be able to.

Leaving things until next year may not be possible, but get on with it we must.

Bucket lists are OK, but there are other lists – lists of what we have neglected to do over the years.

Expressing thanks, sorrow, the need to forgive and be forgiven, to express regret, to give and to receive, to be grateful for the life we have had and for the time we still wish for.

Lockdown of course, time to get sorted and time to let go.