The second is worse.

 I had read other people saying that the seconds can be harder, yet up until today that hadn't been the case for me. My second birthday, my second Christmas and Tall's birthday had all been easier. Today being my second Valentine's Day without Tall has been much harder. 

As I said last year we never really went in for all the roses and chocolate stuff. Yet reading what I wrote last year feels surreal, I can't believe how unfazed I seemed to be. I wish I was feeling that laid back this year. May be the whole pandemic and lockdown are taking their toll on my mental health. May be I am just feeling a bit more raw. I'm not longing for a card or a dozen over priced roses, and I can buy my own chocolate and wine if I feel the need.  I am longing for my Valentine to be here next to me, to have him holding my hand as we watch the world pass by. 

Missing

Dear Tall.

Last night I dreamt about us. The two of us getting on with normal life, nothing special, just the boring stuff. You were walking alongside me, but I'm not sure now where we were. It felt so real, so real that when I woke to find you missing my heart broke into a thousand pieces once more. I wish I could tell you how much I need you to hug me. How much I miss having you to talk to. How much I miss you simply loving me.

I try to visualise how it felt to have your arms wrapped around me, I try to trick my mind into believing I can feel it, but today the mind trick won't work. I know all the analogies about the box with the pain button and the one about glitter (to name but two), I recite them to myself in the hope of calming my head and heart, but ultimately what I am feeling is normal. I must be kind to myself and just let it all out. 

The enforced isolation caused by the virus does little to help, the news articles on intensive care only reminding me of the awful events of almost three years ago when I thought I had lost you. You never did truly recover, and I worry for all those who have left intensive care, with many months of recovery ahead of them. Will they struggle too? 

I watch the TV and see people's lives and stories unfold. People who have found love again, a new happiness, and I am pleased for them. For me there will only be you, the love we had can never be repeated, and I know that no one would be able to match up to you, I'm far too picky. 

You will always have my heart.

Good Cheer Pixie

My first Valentine's Day alone.

Strictly speaking it isn't my first Valentine's Day alone, there were seventeen growing up and four during separation and divorce, but this is my first Valentine's Day without my soulmate Tall. 

How do I feel? Oddly, not as sad as I thought I would feel. I had a bit of a cry when I found out last year's cards and read the words, but once that was done I felt a calmness, a relief. If I retell the events of last year may be it will help explain.

Tall and I had never been big on Valentine's Day, it being nothing more than a commercial opportunity. Our love for each other was clear three hundred and sixty days of the year, you have to allow five days when we would have annoyed each other. Last year we both knew it would be our last and Tall wanted to make sure it was marked. He was desperate to buy me a card, but he was just too ill to get out of the car. I suppose he could have gone online and ordered one, but instead he had to send me into the shop to choose my own. I must have looked at fifty cards, carefully reading the words, looking for the words that I knew in my heart would be the ones Tall would choose. Silently, tears rolled down my face as I knew it was my last card. Another customer spotted me and asked if I was okay. I explained that I was buying a card for my dying husband to give to me and she kindly tried to help. Eventually I found my card, and started looking for one for me to give to Tall. 

I have to admit that looking at the cards this morning I slightly regretted my choice of card for Tall, I should have chosen something more serious, more romantic, although the words I wrote inside probably make up for it. Last year my heart was breaking. All the "knowing" about what was happening, the constant "this is the last time" had me permanently in tears. Tall would tell people that he hadn't got long and they would smile and laugh, "don't be daft". No one believed him and so I was almost completely alone in my grief. 

So this year there is a sense of relief, released from last year's pressure of knowing what was to come. It has happened, the worse is over. I still have Tall's words from that card. 

"I've loved you since the second we met and I will love you to eternity."

Happy birthday Tall.

Today is Tall's birthday or should that be was? I will be celebrating the day of his birth later with one of his favourite meals, a good steak and a good bottle of red. 

Whilst going through some of the stuff in the loft (there are still four boxes to go) I found a letter, more a diary entry, that Tall's mother wrote on his thirty-ninth birthday, I thought I would share it today.

It's Michael's birthday today. Fancy, it's thirty-nine years since that memorable day when he was born here at Thorncliffe Road. Dennis made the midwife a few cakes to take his mind off what was happening upstairs and oh, joy of joys we had a beautiful looking baby boy. 

The weather was very, very cold, icicles hanging down the outside of the windows and I felt sorry for John and Teresa going to school in such weather! 

We had a little dog and he got out during that week and ran across what was then a field across the road, with my mother chasing him. Poor mother, she had been struggling with the washing. We didn't have a washing machine then, I had to do all the washing in a Dean Boiler. I remember the doctor saying "why don't you get a machine?" I thought at the time he was silly, but I don't now. My machine is the best thing I possess.

It's a beautiful day today, the sun is shining and the snowdrops in the garden look lovely. I do hope Mike is having a happy day and that everything is looking better. 

Remember how the darkness is followed by the light.
How warm and sunny days come after each long night.
How springtime follows winter
And the rainbow cloaks the rain
In the same way life's sad moments
Soon turn to joy again. 

How fitting the little poem is at the end and she was right, he was beautiful.

 

January 1st 2020

Well it's here, a new decade, yet again I find myself at the start of a decade having to reinvent myself. At the start of the noughties I was pretty much a single mom to five children, husband having started work in London within days of them starting. The "teens" as I said yesterday began with Tall's ill health being diagnosed as cancer, something which defined the rest of the decade, there was only ever a few months between hospital appointments as his blood and kidney function was monitored. 

It seems there is a pattern to my life and today I feel as if I have been given another chance. I have been a mom and I have been a carer and wife. I don't know yet what I am going to be next, but I do know it has to be something that makes a difference. 

There are no resolutions, no dry January or Veganuary, no vowing to lose three stone in three months or run a marathon in six. I have made those resolutions before and inevitably fail, fueling self blame which leads to further failure. It seems one day of  eating cake / drinking / eating meat / not running causes me to just stop even trying, so no resolutions, no pressure. Instead I am going to try visualising where I want to be a year from now and for once it isn't about how I want to look on the outside, but how I want to feel on the inside. I will never ever stop loving Tall with every fibre of my being, I don't actually want to meet someone else, but I do want to love. I want to love life, I want to share my love with others, I want to help, I want to look back at the end of 2020 and say to myself "yes, you made a difference this year." It might be in the smallest way possible, but maybe, just maybe, at the end of the twenties I will have made a big difference to some people's lives. I have to have hope, faith in my ability and love for everyone.