The Longest Year

My Sweetheart, it's now exactly a year since the fog swirling around in your mind became so dense that it obscured all hope, a year since you took what you saw as the only practical solution open to you in order to ease the pain. It's a year since we cuddled up to each other in bed, a year since I heard you tell me that you love me, a year since I saw your smile, felt your touch or shared your presence. It's a year since I last read to you, made you your favourite cup of mint tea or massaged away the tensions of your day. It's been the longest year of my life, one in which I have hurt over you more than I ever thought it was possible to hurt, cried over you more than I ever thought it was possible to cry and loved you more than I ever thought it was possible to love.

For Auld Lang Syne

The beat of the music from open air concerts on the trendy Waterfront district was interrupted by fireworks soaring into the air against the awe inspiring backdrop of Table Mountain and the drunken cheers of the sweltering crowds of locals and tourists densely thronging the streets and packing the quayside bars and restaurants. Cape Town was celebrating the arrival of the New Year with a carnival vibe and I found myself wondering whether or not to join everybody in welcoming it in or to regret the passing of the old year.

Making New Memories

I bought a mug last weekend. An unremarkable, cheap souvenir of a short continental city break. The kind that can be found in kitchens all over the country. But this particular mug represents something profound, something of incalculable value, something so unexpected that it has almost floored me. It symbolises the creation of new memories and in doing so marks the first genuine proof that this new life can still be worth living.

Pushing the Boundaries

Take a deep breath and keep on walking. Focus on the far side of the bridge. Don't glance at the spot where we had our photo taken after one of our first visits to the theatre together and where others are now posing for the camera. Don't think about the Whitehall Gardens immediately behind me, where we decided to give things another try after a short break up in the early days. Try not to look at the glittering night time panorama of London, sweeping across the Thames and taking in St Pauls Cathedral, the distant behemoths of the Square Mile and across to the Shard, the Oxo Tower and the South Bank.  Our skyline. Our city. Ignore the couples walking hand in hand, huddling together against the cold. Hand the beggar a pound because Louise would always do so. Choke back the welling tears and make it across.

Receiving Signs?

Perhaps Louise is closer to me than I dared hope. Barely a week after writing about the lack of signs, I left the house this morning to discover a small white feather sitting nestled between her muddy walking boots which still sit in our outer porch.

Waiting for Signs

I had resisted the temptation for months until finally I cracked. Sitting under the trees around which Louise's ashes were scattered, in a moment of desperation I choked back the tears for long enough to ask her for a sign, an indication that she was in heaven and that she was happy.

Maintaining Standards

When we moved into our current home the one luxury purchase that we allowed ourselves was a large and ever so slightly stylish dining room table. This was the house we were going to live in for the rest of our lives and we envisaged many years of entertaining large gatherings of family and friends. The rooms would be full of people we loved and admired and the walls would ring to the sound of their conversation and laughter. Now, even while the hopes and ambition mock me, that same dining room table is something of a symbol of my determination not to collapse into chaos.

Beginnings and Transitions

Its not often that I compare myself to a Roman God. In fact I am reasonably certain that I've never done so before, nor will I ever do so again. But at this particular moment in time there is something of a connection to a classical deity, albeit a rather unheroic one. 

Changing Seasons

I remember the snow so vividly. I had been waiting impatiently for it all winter and now, as I stood in the middle of the road outside the house listening to the approaching emergency sirens draw ever closer, I noticed it had finally arrived. Just the lightest of flurries but nonetheless beautiful and mesmerising as it fell gently and silently. Even in the very moment that my world was falling apart I somehow managed to register the irony that it should do so in conditions which on any other occasion, on any other day, would have given me so much pleasure.

A Letter on our Special Day

I haven't written to you Sweetheart since my reply to your farewell letter. The tear soaked one that I somehow managed to read out to you while sitting next to your coffin in the undertakers, stroking your hair for the last time. The one that accompanied you on your final journey. I haven't really needed to write. I can talk to you at any time, no matter where I am. But today is special.  This time four years ago we were walking on the clouds. It was the happiest moment of our lives. The day that we became man and wife. Our East End wedding.

The Bravest Act

Louise was normally a confident passenger, happy to sleep while I was driving long distances. But on this occasion she couldn't settle and sat watching the road ahead anxiously. It was 2am and we were driving a strange hire car in the dark on unfamiliar Sicilian motorways, returning to our holiday villa a couple of hours south after a long, happy but tiring day trip to Mount Etna and the chic resort of Taormina. I was tired, feeling unwell and driving on the 'wrong' side of the road. Louise was alert to the risk of an accident. Three months before she took her life her will to live, her instinctive desire for survival was strong. This was not somebody who treated life carelessly. She valued it and did not want to die.

Standstill

I've been kidding myself in recent weeks. Proud of my strength and resilience I had begun to believe that I had mastered grief, that I was exempt from the setbacks and continuing struggles experienced by others. I was beginning to find living tolerable again and, trying hard to think positively, even to sense hope and opportunity.  I know the theory. I've read the books, talked at length to those further on in this journey than myself.  I should have known better. Grief might temporarily relax its hold but it doesn't give it up that easily. It merely changes its grip, alters its character. 

Help Along the WAY

An image sprang in to my mind the other day. It was of one of the iconic pieces of Great War film footage so often replayed on television; grainy and rudimentary newsreel coverage of injured troops, all of them blinded, marching unsteadily, their hands outstretched holding on to the shoulder of their comrade in front. None of them could see but despite their incapacity they were each able to help others suffering similarly. And by this means everybody was able to make the same journey along the road to safety. It struck me that there were parallels to be drawn with the young widowed community, a group of vulnerable, grieving but immensely resilient men and women groggily but generously helping each other through the most shattering of experiences.

Letting Go of Grief

At every point in this journey through grief I face loss. Louise's death represented not the end of the process but the beginning. The bewildering and shocking loss of her physical presence is reinforced and multiplied by hundreds, thousands, of smaller but still significant deaths. Whenever something which was part of her life, which stood as a proxy for her existence on this planet, her part in my life, disappears I mourn all over again. When I throw away her favourite food, cancel her driving licence, remove her toothbrush from the bathroom, I experience another break with the past. I take a further painful step away from the person, and the life, that I loved so much. But there is a loss which is rarely recognised as such; the loss of grief.

Exhaustion

Early on in this journey I came to the conclusion that the overwhelming experience of bereavement wasn't loss, despair, guilt or anger but love, a love for Louise of startling purity and raw intensity. That love hasn't dimmed. I will hold it for ever, Louise's most precious gift to me. But now, nearly seven months on, the overriding day to day sensation is perhaps different and somewhat less noble. It is exhaustion.

A Measure of Progress

At just before 5pm yesterday I could have been seen jumping about in uncoordinated fashion rather like an overexcited toddler, arms flailing wildly, my face creased in an enormous smile, and at the same time heard shouting incoherently, not in despair but delight. As life events go, Brentford's injury time equaliser against Ipswich Town is as insignificant as it gets, but my response to it carries real meaning and hope.

Describing the Indescribable

This blog now amounts to something like 43 posts and thousands of words on grief and loss. I am honoured and humbled when people thank me for articulating their own emotions. But I feel a fraud for purporting to be able to write on the subject. The truth is that no words can adequately explain the agony and despair of the death of your partner, and particularly perhaps when that death comes at such a young age, so suddenly and so violently. 

Married - Just

I had to complete a staff survey at work this week.  There were the usual questions on satisfaction with pay and rewards and understanding of corporate priorities, but as I came to the personal section my heart sank. I knew what was coming next. I used to fret about the age category I fell into, helplessly observing my relentless march towards middle age. But now I dread responding to the inevitable questions on marital status. Sure enough here it was; Married or Single? A brutal binary choice. Black or white. But I no longer live in a binary world and the only colour I see is grey. Nothing is simple any longer, not even whether I am married.

Hope and Confusion

Anniversaries take on a particular emotional significance for the newly bereaved, even half anniversaries. Six months ago yesterday Louise took her life. In the process the life that I was living, and thought that I was going to live, was violently wrenched away from me. In the time it took me to read the note left on the front door I was transformed from a contented and fulfilled husband to a lonely and despairing widower.

Curator of the Archive

Louise was the least materialistic person that I've ever known. She wasn't particularly interested in jewellery, had a relatively modest wardrobe and was content with the most basic of electrical goods. If she treated herself it was much more likely to be on an experience, a holiday, meal or trip to the theatre, than the purchase of any kind of possession. And yet over 40 years she still accumulated a household's worth of articles, each of which have their own story to tell, their own place in Louise's life and a sentimental value attached to them that has been transformed since 23rd January.