I used to love Saturday night TV. Gladiators was a firm favourite with all the family, we were even sometimes allowed to eat our tea while watching it! Naturally, we had to have our plate on a tray to reduce the risk of spills and crumbs. Casualty is the other Saturday night show that I remember fondly. My brothers would use the time it was on to take advantage of their half an hour of computer allowance. They were allowed just half an hour on a Saturday, I'm not sure they were allowed to play on it at all in the week. They often chose to take the time during Casualty because they knew that mum would get absorbed by the TV and it wouldn't be until the fifty minute show was finished that she would tell them to get off the computer. If they could feign not hearing well enough they would eek out another ten minutes, allowing themselves an hour in all. Dad didn't watch Casualty, in fact would have to sound the Casualty warning alarm when it was time for the show to warn him not to come in the room. Not because we objected to him watching with us, but because he cannot stand anything to do with blood, even the fake stuff on TV. He once, as a student, gave blood as he thought it was a good thing to do. He fainted after. They had him lying out on one of their beds for so long after giving blood before he was able to go home that they told him never to go again. So the Casualty section of a Saturday night was mine and mum's special time.
In recent years I have rarely watched Casualty on a Saturday night. I have not fallen out of love with the show, I have instead chosen to watch it on catch up. This, at first, was due to Saturday night busyness, more recently has been a combination of it sometimes being on after I'd gone to bed but mostly as the husband does not like the show. So I watch it at some point during the week. I have just watched the most recent episode. It involved one of the main characters leaving. When one doctor leaves, another needs to arrive. The show ended with a trail for next weeks show, the doctor arriving. As I saw who it was I exclaimed (aloud, despite home alone) 'It's Ash!' I was highly excited, one of our favourite nurses from good old Saturday nights had come back having retrained as a doctor! I went to find my phone to ring Mum. Before I got to the phone I remembered why that was not possible. I say I remembered, more I was kicked in the gut with the reminder. People say that time heals, I don't think it does where grief is concerned. I think that in time you learn to live with the hurt, to a point where at times you don't feel it. And then something happens, a memory, an event you wish they were at, a person you want to tell them about, something that happened that you know they would find funny, and the pain washes over you again, as fresh as the first day you felt it. Time doesn't heal, it just helps you learn how to live with it.
