Sometimes it's okay to need.

It's odd isn't is how reading another blog post can take you to a place inside yourself.

It happened a couple of weeks ago when I was reading Lyn's tribute to her Mum. And again this morning when I was reading about Pam's parents move into sheltered accommodation.

I wrote a comment for both. But I've come unstuck with the last sentence I wrote on Pam's site. I was full of good intentions to work my way up my blog list reading and commenting, but I can't till I've let go of some of the stuff that is circulating round my heart right now.

I just wrote~ I miss my parents~ I don't think I ever say it like that, I usually go through patches of missing one or the other, but to feel that pain of having neither of them is so difficult to bear.

I know why it's more poignant right now, my last remaining older family member, my Uncle Bob, my Dad's brother, is having to deal with the terminal illness of his wife. He is in his mid 80s. His daughter lives in America and therefore my sister and I are his closest living relatives in distance from him. And he is becoming increasingly frail and right now scared.

I come from a reasonably dysfunctional family. In that they don't bother with each other, they never have. But I am my mum's daughter, and I have been the person to try and keep in touch with family members, whether it was going to visit my cousins in Boston or London. I used to hold family parties and invite all my uncles and aunts . They would all come and say, we must do this more often, but it never happened. Nowadays this horrible phrase, and similar lack of action happens at funerals instead. And still no one, but me makes any effort.

So today I am in a place of reminiscence, thinking about my Mum and Dad, remembering them in odd fragments of memory. Seeing my Old Uncle Bob, as he's been known for ever, in and out of my childhood. Like Friday lunch times, when for some reason we went home for lunch from school, when my sis and I were little. And OUB would take us back to, and if we were very lucky he's let us sit in the open back of his tiny little truck.

OUB was an antique dealer, for years he had antique shops. Again as children my sis and I would go with Mum, who always held the fort when Bob and my Aunty Cynthia went away and we would get soooo bored in the shop. But it is where I fist learnt about the wonders of antiques.

I have been an avid collector all my life. Nothing that would set Christie's alight, no Chippendale you understand! But of what is known as Smalls, so I have a wondrous collection of old perfume bottles with silver tops, the oldest is from 1900. They are housed in a wonderful old shop sweet cupboard with still bears the name Fry's in gold lettering on the bottom.

That is just one of the things I have lots of, there are powder compacts, silver cigarette boxes, wooden toys that belonged to my Dad and his brother, very old sweet tins, glass bottles, some of which were dug up when we found the midden at the farmhouse and barn I used to live in. And on and on.

I don't buy stuff anymore I have enough and nowhere to put anything else at all!

So many of the things came from my Mum, who used to love going shopping with me to old dusty antique shops and would always buy me things.

And now I think I've come full circle as to why I'm upset this morning. It isn't just Pam's post that's got me it's Helen's as well. She has a wondrous post about the generosity of a friend of hers from the other side of the world, who has sent her a present.

I give things to people all the time, whether something simple as flowers or books or even magazines. I bake cakes for my sister, I buy my youngest son little foodie treats when he doesn't ask for them. I slip him the odd £20 when he's skint. Upstairs in my wardrobe is a book by my eldest son's favourite author, awaiting his visit in two weeks, just so he can have something to do when he's here.

Like so many of my clients and I hear this time and time again. That they give out, not in presents, but in time and advice and just being there for others.

And right now today I miss my parents for that. To be able to phone up Dad, just cause I wanted a chat with someone. To see my Mum who'd always have a little treat for us when we came home from school, like the first fresh peach of the year, or some cherries.

Don't get me wrong I'm not writing this cause I'm being grabby and just want to be given things. I don't. I just miss the spontaneity of been given to that I used to have, that is totally tied up in missing my parents. That unconditional positive regard, otherwise more sensibly known as love! That meant the thoughtfulness of a bunch of daffodils, just cause.

And I'm very good at self soothing, I can give to myself without a qualm, hence to daffodils everywhere in the house this week. It's not that, it's just getting affirmation of someones love for you when it's not been asked for.Even though I know without doubt that my family and friends love me, I sometimes yearn for someone to phone me, hug me,give me bunch of daffs for no reason at all and that I rarely get anymore.

Hey ho