Reflections.

Water is a strange element, isn't it? When it is still, it allows us to reflect and yet displays everything upside down. That's how I feel my life is now. Mark dying turned everything upside down. The normal order of things shattered and splintered like a stone breaking the still surface of a quiet pond. We were thrown into the unimaginable, the dreadful and the unbelievable; a life without a precious child. At first we were drowning in the dark and murky depths of insanity. We had no will to struggle to breathe or swim to the surface for air. There was comfort in the despair, security in the pain and certainty in the pointlessness of living. We were ready to be swept away without a fight to join Mark, wherever he might be.
Then slowly, with the love and compassion of many friends, we made those first tentative kicks that would take us up to the surface and into a living world, a blue and green landscape where Mark was no more. The temptation to give up, to give in, to sink slowly once more was, at times, overwhelming, but we broke the surface, breathed in the warm particles of life and began to feel the first flickerings of hope that we might survive the unsurvivable. Now life ripples at our feet, tickling our toes and encouraging us to take tiny, tentative and unsteady steps on a journey where there is no SATNAV and no-one to say that we have reached our 'final destination'. So we are walking with the river to guide us.................on a symbolic journey of loss, life and love.

The source of the idea....

Hi, this must be the craziest idea I have ever had! When Mark died in January 2011, I remember saying to no-one in particular that I would never be able to say I was glad it had happened, but I wanted to be able to say that because this happened, some good had come out of it.
So here we are nearly one year on trying to find the 'good' that has come out of it.
Mark loved walking. He walked in London, he walked in Taipei and he walked for miles round the hills and fields he loved near Barton under Needwood. He even started to walk the Coastal Path starting at Lands End and getting as far as Padstow in 2009.
So walking is what we decided to do.........but walking the Thames, from the source to the Thames Barrier. A sort of symbolic journey of life itself. But this is not just any old walk, this is a walk with a purpose. We would like to raise some money for the Catholic Mission Orphanage in Taiwan, something that was close to Mark's heart and something we feel he would approve of.
So we invite you to travel with us on this emotional journey in memory of the Marky Mark........legend!