All My Trials Lord

I've been doing well this week. Fortified by numbness and that familiar sense of incomprehension and disbelief, I have at times come close to some kind of normal function. The hammering of grief in my head and heart has been reduced to a low pitched hum, ever present but not disabling. The stream of tears has slowed to a trickle and I have been waking each morning in the near sure - if always mistaken - expectation that the coming day would be my first without crying since 23rd January.

My new found strength led me to examine one of those potential emotional time bombs that lie in wait for me all over the house, in every draw, under ever pile of paper, in every digital archive; an Aled Jones track on my Spotify Play List which I knew must be there because Louise had listened to it. It didn't seem to quite fit with our normal musical tastes. One glance at the title, 'All my Trials Lord', and I knew the bomb had exploded. A quick Google of the lyrics left me in a heap on the floor, both literally and metaphorically. Mixing metaphors, yet again the juggernaut of grief had flattened me when I had been least expecting it. This was what Louise, during the depths of her crisis, had been listening to for comfort and, perhaps, inspiration;

All my trials Lord

Soon be over

I had a little book that was given to me

And every page spelt liberty

All my trials

Soon be over

Too late my brothers

Too late but never mind

All my trials Lord

Soon be over

There is a tree in paradise

That pilgrims call it the tree of life

All my trials Lord

Soon be over

Too late my brothers

Too late

But never mind

All my trials Lord

Soon be over

All my trials Lord

Soon be over

I have been trying so hard, with some success, to blot out thoughts of Louise's mental turmoil and anguish in the weeks leading up to her death. But here was fresh heartbreakingly eloquent evidence of the despair she was experiencing and the only hope that she felt she had left to cling on to. It felt as though my heart had been sliced open. If only I had noticed the track appear in the play list at the time, it might have further alerted me to her state of mind. If, if, if.....

I have tried to use love as a form of resistance. But it has its limits. All my love was not powerful enough to save Louise. I fervently hope that her trials are indeed over, but in the process they have become mine. And as I lay crumpled underneath the bannisters, all I had left to fall back on for comfort, yet again, was love.