What happens to us when life changes in an instant? How do we feel? Shock, grief, loss, disbelief? There is no logic and there is no fathomable reason, but it appears anyway, catching you by astonishment, by total surprise, and the aftershocks of the earthquake of feelings linger on for days, months andeven years. The landscape of your life has changed forever. One small trigger and you feel like you are living it all over again.

Nothing could prepare you for this moment and how you wish you could be given a dial to turn the clock back, to freeze a frame, to undo the result.

One morning, a woman on a 90 something floor of the Twin Towers in New York, on that fateful day, was typing and sending an email. It was 09.44. An ordinary day, she had decided to go into work at 08.30. It was a new job of two weeks. She could have started at 09.00 but had decided to help out that day by going in early. Her husband, with aviation experience, heard a plane’s engine that he knew was too low, followed by an explosion. By 09.46, just two minutes after sending that email, his wife was literally ‘vapourised.’ No body, no bones, not even ash to bury. In those two minutes the normal became the hideous nightmare nobody wants to hear. Your loved one has died, a life of just 40 years extinguished in an instant.

How can anyone make any sense of that? I remember a GP at the hospital where I worked at the time after the Lockerbie bombing of December 21st 1988 say any one of us could be dead within the next 30 minutes. I have never forgotten that statement.

Last month, it was an ordinary day when a ping came from my phone. I read the message and couldn’t believe in what I was reading. Someone whom my late friend Geoff in the Philippines knew daughter had died, suddenly aged 22. How could the universe deal this card to a family full of love and gratitude for life? A family committed to faith, God and prayer. It made no sense. It sat heavy on me all day and still does, and with the family’s permission I can write about it here in this blog post.

Juliana, epitomised her beautiful name. Having graduated last year from a four-year college degree in Civil Law the doors of her future lay wide open. Then suddenly the tropical Dengue Fever shut that door with a bang that no-one saw coming. She was an artist too and I saw many of her paintings.

 I got to know Rose her mother, on Social Media, after my friend Geoff’s death (the family were neighbours where he lived for several months of the year).

I was inspired by her mother’s digital creative ability, her optimism as she showed us her photography and lovely positive affirmations, her grace and the total love and commitment she instilled daily into her two children: John, now graduated as an architect and recently married on November 4th and Juliana. I asked the Universe how could you deal this kind of card to a woman who only ever called in love, gratitude and abundance?

Then two weeks ago we heard of one ordinary evening train turned into a horror ride as people are stabbed and the train making an emergency stop at Huntington, a Fenland town my family knows so well, having lived there for a few years.

So, what is the point of the post, its central message? Seven months ago, an innocent decision, a sequence of events led to the unexpected on my own doorstep. My blogging ceased overnight, the words frozen, suspended and left dangling like a flimsy thread within a piece of string. That piece of string is still a tight rope I walk on and will be doing so for at least the next five years. Nothing is certain, and my life can only be planned on a day or weekly basis.

During this time, I have learnt valuable lessons. My friends have been rocks of gold of which I have clung to. They have given me hope and a lifeline, their patience and care have been totally remarkable and kind. I have been shown blessings and an insight few may see.

Worry is futile, planning is fine, but goals and decisions can take a different and twisted path. We can never truly see what is around the corner and maybe it’s a good thing we can’t. I have learnt that all we have is this moment, this day and that is a blessing. Trivial things seem absurd and hard days still feel like blessings because I am still living and breathing in this world.

We can turn pain into purpose. The husband of the women killed on 9/11 went on to do amazing work with the widows left behind on that day. He discovered more men died than women and that over 1,800 of the later needed urgent help and support. For Rose, I know that her daughter will live on in countless ways, not yet known or seen, but I have no doubt she will because her mother is an exceptional woman and the rest of her family equally so. I have always wanted to meet them in the Philippines. If I ever get to Australia, and on my return home, I really hope I can visit them.

For myself, a relative stranger, where I was temporarily staying for three months gave a notebook and coaster to me with the words from Jeremiah 29: 11 because she felt she needed to.

‘ For I know the plans, I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.’

 The words struck me because I know what I want my plans to be, as yet to be unfolded, as yet unformed and unseen. It felt like a clear message that everything was going to be OK..

So let me leave you with this lovely face of an angel. Let her teach you that beauty can’t be extinguished even in death, that legacy lives, that memories made are never lost, that personalities persist long after physical perishing, that light always glows brighter and more passionate than the darkness, because we inject the light with love that darkness can never erode, nor its flame ever be extinguished.

In the trauma of these last few months, how comforting it is to be back writing with you again.

In memory of Juliana M Florino born 29^th August 2003 and died October 13^th, 2025.

May you rest in peace, but your life lives on forever in our hearts.

(Photographs and words posted with kind permission of the family.)