Monochrome Monday (Mourning)

Only a fool lives in a magical land where the surf is always uncrowded, glassy and perfect and where life is always wonderful and where even the lemons it serves up are only for the tequila. Still, its crazy how we have perceptions about people we don't really know and their lives - perceptions that could be wildly inaccurate. 

And so I find myself wide awake at 315am worrying about the broken television, the broken back gate, the washing machine that has attitude, the work piling up at the office. 
But mostly in the dead of tonight, I'm thinking about the day ahead - travelling to another town three or four hours drive north to provide support to my late brother's son, wondering what the hell I'm going to say to comfort a young fella who's lost his 22 year old sister to an 8 year battle with cancer. 
500am and I down the first of many coffees. I can't help but feel grateful for the healing surf I had yesterday with old mates and new. I'm also feeling grateful to have experienced the dignity, the fight and wicked humour of a young lady who would still crack jokes using a pencil and pad even when bed bound and robbed of her voice by dire hospital treatments that failed to work.
So long Nikki. See you in the dreamtime.