Hurricane and WWII

As I sat waiting for Hurricane Florence to come near to where I lived I called my mum in England. All my life I have heard stories about WWII my mum grew up in WWII she is now 88 years old. She compared the hurricane to her time in the war and how the uncertainty must have been horrid but as I listened I quickly realized other than the uncertainty there was nothing similar. The people who grew up in that time or any time of war did not know for one minute what the next second would hold. No cell phones, television nothing just waiting to hear news on a radio. The innocence of childhood gone and taken. My mum recalled going to a field to collect walnuts from a tree and looking up at the sky in all innocence thinking that they were planes that were safe, but machine guns fired on that field. These people firing at an innocent child and her mum, my mum and my Nan laid in the field until they had gone. She talked how her mum, dad and herself knitted socks, gloves and scarfs and gave books to the gunnery people that she passed on her walk to the train station on the way to school. How they had no inside toilets, how windows were blacked out. She said " I don't want to remember but the memories just keep flooding back". This innocent person, her life changed forever not just in a hurricane but because of a war that she knew not when the end would be. My mum has fought many wars in her life and is indeed the bravest person I have ever known. I wished to God I could hug her. We all live our battles it maybe in our minds, maybe scared of a hurricane, but we often forget those who have gone through so much and are often forgotten. As a child I did not want to hear more about the war but as an adult all I wished I could do was to take all those fears away that she had and give her back a childhood I am sure she wished she had. You know as I listen to her she talks with love for all those people some never came home. I can thank Hurricane Florence for showing me to love more, listen more and just to be so thankful that my mum got to live through it all. I often forget to listen, to truly be attentive to someone talking to me. I think we all can learn from what my Mum said. She added "Laugh at life and life will laugh at you, go be happy always"