Reminiscence

As he breathes gently next to me, I move to touch his feet with mine. The radio stirring us awake. Sometimes a hand is forced and in a moment everything you thought you knew changes. To learn to move forward often involves turning to the past, so I find myself looking back.

As the world shut down around us I found pleasure in the simple things. A calm in the flurry of daily life. I was entering that phase where a mother becomes a taxi driver, football coach, hours sat at the edge of the swimming pool waiting for their turn to display the latest belly flop and eagerly awaiting a high five in the changing rooms. I have delighted in not worrying constantly about being on time.

But I am also afraid. I was learning to accept that busy life, an inevitable path I had to choose to quiet the resentment. I’m hurt and angry. Another memory waiting to be made is cancelled. It’s harder to lean on people you can’t touch. And with routine abandoned where is the direction? Is there something new I can be, will my hand be forced again when so much has already changed.

I’ve never been one to conform. My life has taken me on a range of twists and turns I have tried to embrace. I have found resisting only makes it harder. Leaning into the corners means you don’t fall over. With there always being something to respond to I have felt called to living a life in crisis, I seem to seek out the chaos. In a forced quiet I can’t stay still, why am I searching and yearning constantly for more. Will I ever be satisfied, why am I constantly bracing myself, waiting for the next gush of wind to take me in a new direction.

So I return to something familiar. A pondering on who I once was. What do I want to rediscover. What should I leave behind. I allow it to wash over me, flitting from one memory to another rambling. The ideas and excitement and fear rushing at me in one great blizzard. I can’t see. I’m confused and exhilarated.

I look deeper to a place I thought I had left it behind but here it is, staring me in the face. So real I lean out to touch it. But my finger tips don’t quite reach anymore. There are too many opportunities. Too many I might have wasted. I look for them in the storm but they are whitewashed and barely visible. Just a distant idea of a life that could have been. Did I loose myself in the chaos? Or is the something new I have become enough. Is it even new at all. Moving forward often involves turning to the past.

As he breathes gently next to me, I move to touch his feet with mine. As the world attempts to come back to life his warmth let’s me know a future. It isn’t the one I planned, but it is the one I hoped. The noise on the radio is different. But here, in this moment it is enough.

Locating the stopcock

I’m crouched in the kitchen wrapped in a towel. My hair dripping wet from the shower I just abandoned. There are 2 taps. The first one did nothing. The second is stuck.

Water is pouring through the light fitting. So I run into the garden, in that mad panic that makes you go outside instead of getting the bucket from the cupboard.

‘Is that definitely the stopcock?’ I was sure it was but he’s made me doubt myself. Water drips onto me. I’m frantically pulling out the bottles of bleach and washing powder from under the sink, holding the towel in my teeth. I need to put some clothes on.

‘What about under the stairs?’ Out comes the cat box, workbench, carrier bags, spare bits of work top. I grab a hammer. It has to be this one.

The hammer isn’t working. Pliers? I wrench it rounds. Lefty loosey, Righty tighty. Please work please work. The sound of the water on my kitchen floor sounds deafening. The tap is moving. Slowly the meter stops spinning. I burst into tears.

Crouched in my kitchen. I can’t stop sobbing. It actually really matters.

This is a special moment. Almost as though it’s my house properly now. No landlord to ring and beg for help, no one sent round (apart from my handy-friend who promptly replaces the pipe under the bath!) this is my responsibility, my problem to fix.

Later that evening I’m being reprimanded by the mini-me. “It feels like you’re kind of taking over mum. I like to pack my swimming bag myself.”

She has never packed it before. It’s something I’ve always done. I haven’t taken over at all. I feel hurt by the accusation, that my role as parent is so unappreciated. How dare she tell me off for helping… and after the kitchen was a swimming pool this morning.

But she wants it. She’s hungry for that responsibility. She wants to find her swimming costume in the pile of laundry. She wants to fold her own towel. Choose her own hair brush.

Responsibility isn’t just a burden. It’s a gift. The responsibility of owning a home. Comforting a loved one, sharing experiences, growing. With responsibility comes a sense of achievement, even when it’s hard.

I have carried a lot over the years. Now it’s time to share. I need to let her pack her bag… it is her responsibility to carry and her responsibility if she forgets!

She also moved up a class that day! And I couldn’t be prouder of us both.

The Luckiest…

I’m stood behind her. I look into her eyes through the mirror, the gravity of the situation held in this little girls eyes. As I tie the flower crown on her head she says “everyone will look at me! I don’t want to be happy”

Her dress sticks out as she spins, and I hold her. Looking at my own reflection over her shoulder, my white dress gleaming, the sunflowers in my hair, I breathe.

How can I miss him so much yet be so happy to be with another all in the same moment. My heart is full of pain and joy in equal measure. She feels it too. Her “extra Dad” waiting at the end of an aisle. Full of anticipation, hope, waiting to catch a glimpse of his bride and all that she brings. A suppressed pain that spills out as surprising as it is inevitable.

We breathe. She smiles. Asks for the shimmering lipstick refused just moments ago.

The church is filled with our loved ones. 2 families united in hope. It’s just as imagined. I look at his face beaming, the sun came out just for this moment. The rain was coming in sideways when I woke, slamming against the windows. Now, it lights up the stained glass and shines on our union.

My husband. This man who has accepted all that is and was and will ever be. He delights in the mystery, unashamed and irreverent, respectful and courageous. I see them both, their differences. Their similarities. What did I do to deserve so much love?

I could have never hoped I had the capacity for this. How a once broken heart could heal and grow more knowing, more open, more willing. I do not need this, but want it. I want you to know it wasn’t spoiled, that as I look across the room at a sea of faces smiling at me, I am truly happy.

Lucky doesn’t even come close.

A year and 1 day…

A year and one day since I first laid eyes on you. Your wide grin, smiling eyes, I skipped across the road to you. Like meeting an old friend. A joke, a laugh, you shone. You met me where I was, without judgement. An openness that I thought was impossible to find.

We talked for hours about nothing and everything, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t share. No stone you couldn’t turn. How could this man allow me to open up so fully? We sat out in the cool spring air, nothing else existed, both of us hungry for more. I felt my heart smile. I wanted you to kiss me there, but you held back just enough to leave me wanting.

You opened my heart to a real hope. Our whole lives were there for the taking.

Cancer had stolen from me that opportunity. Over the years I let go. I grieved the life we would not share. I knew we wouldn’t experience that together. I hoped. I always hoped.

Sitting next to you I feel that hope stronger than ever. A tentative touch. A knowing look. Excitement. There is no fear.

I remember sitting in the consultants room. News of the spread, unsuccessful treatment.. “we don’t have long do we?” The Indian uncle simply shook his head.

We had 3 and a half beautiful years together after that moment. Everyday living in the moment. Grasping at life. Filling it with the things we knew we might never share again. And every time we saw a beautiful sunset or went on a trip wondering, in the silent moments if this would be the last.

But in his death my longing to share this with another was still alive.

A year and one day since I first saw your face, your wide grin and smiling eyes. I went to the toilet and you thought I’d run away. Now you know. You know I don’t run. I don’t hide. I seek joy and laughter and people I love to share it with.

We talked until we were told to leave, the dark sky hanging over us. You gave me a lift home. I didn’t need one. It was only around the corner. We talked more. In that place between staying and leaving you leaned over and met me with your lips and I felt…

I talked to him about you. I hadn’t expected this. I wanted his reassurance and comfort. And it came through you, a gift and a blessing. Time has given us another opportunity and another way to live. A life that could be complicated but is blissfully simple and easy.

A year and one day since we forgot to talk about music or movies and I sent a message too late but you were still thinking about me too. And now, a year and a day later, I am laid next to you knowing how lucky I am, that hope is never lost and my heart has too much love to give to ever close.

Thank you X

the Missing Christmas

I waved goodbye. He didn’t see me, facing the other way, obscured by a pillar. By the time I moved round he has gone out of sight. If he wasn’t taken I don’t know how I could have let him leave.

We had stared at each other the night before, knowing we would soon have to say goodbye. But I have said goodbye before, and this is not the same.

This is my second Christmas without Ben. It feels as though a lifetime has passed in the blink of an eye. The rebuilding of a life on strong foundations. A new home. A new love. The same shared goals.

As I lay in bed at night the missing mingles together, intertwined in a way that brings tears of sadness and hope all at once. How can I miss him so much yet be so happy to love another all in the same moment. I am full of pain and joy in equal measure.

The love I have for Ben never diminishes, and I wondered, with that love taking up all my heart, how another could ever find space.

But I have grown another chamber. It wasn’t empty before because it didn’t exist and now can I feel it growing with every look, every kiss, every shared experience. It exists alongside the other, the second gaining strength from the first. They take up the same space, not replacing but adding to.

As we share our separate Christmas we are together. The remembering, the hope, the promises of past, present and future. And as I look to the new year I smile. I have been taught to take life and grab it. I won’t let this slip through my fingers. They will grow together.

And I wonder how it is, that in adding to my own pot of love, I am somehow loved more. Not despite, but because.

A year and 2 days…

As I sit on the field looking at our beautiful girls it suddenly strikes me how far we have come.

A short year that has been packed with learning, change and figuring out how to live without you.

I was determined to get to sports day, to celebrate these wonderful little people. As Heidi finished her raced I fought back tears, they came anyway. Last year they played your song on the speakers and it came like a flood. Sat here in the same field, there are no knowing looks, no head tilts, no “I’m sorry”. I am smiling and so are they.

I’m glad. The time has put that space between us in a way that hurts beyond belief, but it has gifted us with a sense of peace. I am a parent in a field watching her children succeed.

I know you are here. I see you in their determined faces. Their smiles. Their pure enjoyment. We taught them that together. You have taught them more than you could ever know.

A year brings a fresh set of memories. A celebration of how we have survived, continued. A new year of firsts that aren’t… this is not the first day without you. I have done many. And it feels wonderful. I know I can do this.

And as Isobel streaks for the finish line I remember the advice she once gave you. “I know how to run marathons Daddy. When your legs get tired you just have to tell them not to stop”.

Packing

I had to start somewhere.

I had already begun clearing the shelves in the kitchen, but as I turn the screwdriver a small part of me breaks. I remember putting these up, the pencil lines still visible under the screws. We had drilled holes in the wrong place the first time, hadn’t measured them properly.

There are out of date ground almonds, a bag of broken chocolate, protein drinks. I thought I had cleared all this out months ago, in the haze of grief that finds some things easy and others unbearable.

I’m mostly sad they have been uneaten. He hated waste. He would probably tell me 6 months beyond ‘a best before date’ is fine. I’d would get a tummy bug and he wouldn’t. He had a gut of steel (despite not really having any at all).

I move around the house with little direction. Choosing tasks that are easy when I need and smaller chunks of the more difficult ones.

But the difficult things are never what I expect.

When we moved here I made him reduce his library to one long shelf. As I take them down the dust stings my eyes. Each has a corner turned, a rudimentary bookmark made from a train ticket, a flyer or a napkin. There are notes in the margins. His unmistakable and illegible scrawl bringing the text to life with his thoughts.

There is a letter to himself, written in 2003, a list of promises to better himself and a wish to move back to Preston. The paper bag he wrote it on is crumpled and worn. He was probably in a train journey. A few pages along my own writing appears in a card, marking the passage of time and the continued revisiting of the works he loved the most.

Solzhenitsyn, Brecht, Russian plays, apartheid poetry…

I discard craft items, select the good paintbrushes and promise myself I will draw a new charcoal for the kitchen.

I didn’t intend to look at the photos. But as I get the box down I can’t resist grabbing a handful. An empty photo album begging to be filled, I begin shoving them in. There is no reasoning. He has simply printed off photos he liked. I smile at the memories, there is only joy for a life lived to the full.

There are re-prints of some. His smiling face next to another, celebrating the end of a race, holding hands across a finish line, showing off medals, his arm wrapped tightly around the shoulders of a friend. The surprise tears begin to spring up. There are 5 copies of the same photo, 4 of another, 2 next to each other, 6 copies of 6 smiling faces. He had intended to give them away.

He never had chance.

Or maybe he just never got round to it… that’s more likely.

I miss him.

I do not weep for myself. I have cried enough selfish tears. In this moment I mourn the things he never did. The good intentions never followed through. The gifts never given. The books unread. I am sad for the uneaten almonds.

There is a bottle of morphine I had hidden on the top shelf behind the Nutella.

I will always miss him. But I have learned in the missing and the pain there is respect and love. An acknowledgement of the man I was lucky enough to call my husband.

I will keep what I can. I will show his daughters the things he loved.

Isobel squeals “I’m so proud of you mummy! You got rid of 12 books!!”

Things I can’t do

I have come to realise I’m a jealous person. For all my positivity I have a burning to desire to have more, do more, see more, experience more.

Very often this drives me. I want to do everything. My life is filled with … life. I am often likely to burn out because of this. I like to think I’m good at self regulating, until a plate smashes to the floor. Today I found myself jealous. And not of a trip to Mexico, or a theatre ticket I can’t afford. But something small. Herein lies an uncharacteristic rant.

I can’t take a nap if I have a headache. In fact I can’t have a headache at all. It’s rare for me to be sick.

I can’t be sick.

5 years of living with someone who is more sick than me has given me a lack of perspective when it comes to illness. Or maybe I’ve just been lucky. But I do wonder what would happen if I was ill.

I can’t be late.

Ok, I am late. All the time. But it’s hard. Getting ready for school in the morning is what most parents have nightmares about. I’m irritable before the day even starts. Those last 20 minutes where all that needs to happen is shoes to be put on flies by in some warped montage of homework gripes, a letter I haven’t responded to, a book unread… and I don’t have anyone to help me. Every time I need to leave the house I imagine everyone having just what they need at the right time.

I can’t lie in. Even if I have the chance, on one of those days where the girls are sleeping over, I wake up at 6:30, eyes wide and waiting for the next event. This is related to…

I can’t relax.

I can’t prioritise.

I have days where I think I can’t do life (and not in an I’m-going-to-kill-myself way) But I carry on regardless. I plough through my unending list of tasks. Willing the end of the day to come around, only so I can wonder about the list of things I haven’t done.

But this is what drives me. This is what keeps me going. Should I change? Do I need to re-evaluate? Do I need to go to a meditation class? Learn to slow down my life? Probably. The thought fills me with dread. I simply don’t have time.

I can’t stop.

On Friday I stopped. I stared at a painting in a quiet room. My favourite space in the world. I look at the painting and realise I am drawn to the activity within the stillness. I can see the strokes of the brush. I can feel the artist moving across the room, looking, adding, looking again, waiting for the point where the painting is finished and it’s ready to be seen.

I am painting. A rich canvass that is layered with texture and colour.

I can’t finish the painting.

It’s not ready.

Finding myself single

I’m staring at a form. It doesn’t have the box I need.

At first I didn’t like being labelled a widow. It conjures up images of pottering around. Dusting old frames of manilla wedding photos and children long since grown. Having embraced the community of young widows (and older ones too) I realise this label is truthful, honest. It says “I loved someone once, now they are gone.”

Now, I am longing to tick that box.

I was forced to let go of married early. An innocent question from a confused 7 year old. “What about your wedding ring? Are you still married?” Only a day. Out of the mouth of a child too young for the words. I still feel married, I tell her. “And when you take it off will that mean you will marry someone else?”

Oh those words. Would I ever meet someone else? How could I. Who could compare? When you have loved so deep and given so much of yourself… would there be anything left to give another? My mind raced and I struggled to quiet the panic. One day at a time, one step.

I removed my ring a couple of days later. Placing it carefully in the box alongside my delicate engagement ring. I closed it gently, placing that part of me on the shelf. I rub the indent on my finger, staring at its nakedness.

Only a few months ago single didn’t feel like an option. A denial of the most significant part of my life, the implication so hugely opposed to the complexity of my situation. I may be without a partner, but the day to day responsibilities don’t translate to the freedom and carefree inference of single-dom.

Single suggests available. I am not. I may seek company. I’m alone. Not lonely, but I am made to love. My cup has been refilled. Am I ready to give again? I may.

The confusion between missing him, his touch, his live, his smile. I cannot allow myself to seek this just anywhere. How can I bring another into this impossible situation? How can I erase the past, not only for my sake, but for my children. Would another be jealous to see his photo there in the wall, so intrinsically part of the family it’s immovable. Can another be placed alongside his. Would that even be fair?

Yet something inside me has awakened. Not only a longing for something past, but a quiet willingness, a wanting to share. Am I ready to give again? I may.

London

For everyone who is running tomorrow… I wanted to republish this from 2016.

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The scan results were to be sent to London, a better picture of the situation to plan radiotherapy. Unpredictable, as cancer is, the plans have changed. The dormant tumor in his liver has awoken and we are awaiting surgery again.

Sitting in the familiar room I listened and took in the information. Later a huge wave of numbness washed over me. The next few days already seem to have been locked away in a place specially reserved for pain so they are almost unreachable. Almost. In order for them to be put there, the door had to be opened. As I peeped through the dusty shadows I saw fragments of the time he last had surgery. It’s too hard to remember, I cannot allow myself. It burns my heart and prickles my eyes and I shut it away again. I have allowed myself some time to cry, to explore that feeling without fully immersing myself in it. I know one day I will have to go there again, but right now I have plans.