The end of an era

It is eight years now since Blacksmith Paul died and, though the grief and impact on my life goes on, I don't feel called to write on this blog so much these days. 

I do sometimes reflect on grief on my other blog on the page of my writing business. Via this page, you can also find out about the grief writing workshops that I run periodically. 

I'm amazed to see that eight years on, my words are still resonating. I'm now archiving this website. I've left a large number of posts on this blog available to read for free, but if you'd like to read the full story of my love and grief over the loss over my partner, the best way to do it is to purchase the book. You can do this online via Bookshop or Amazon   or  via my website (please note I am only able to post books in the UK)

Sending love to all of the grieving hearts and wishing you strength as you move forward in loss.

Echoes of loss

Today is Sunday 10th March. It is Mother's Day and also the eighth anniversary of Blacksmith Paul's death. My son is on his court-ordered visit to his dad and my daughter is still sleeping and has probably forgotten this special day, I think. My partner has stayed long enough to bring me breakfast in bed but he has his own family to tend to. My own mother died years ago so I find myself alone with no plans for the day. It's ok. I'm an introvert and I like to be alone, it's a rare treat, but it's still a conundrum to know how to mark the occasion. 

Yesterday, I posted a picture of Paul on his memorial page on Facebook. He's looking thoughtful and hammering a hunk of metal in a forge somewhere. I didn't take the photo but I consider it appropriate. I feel I must post something in case people think I have forgotten him and, at the same time, feel like a broken record for still going on about it. I mention that a few of us might walk to his bench today and invite others to join us, but it's all a bit last-minute and, in the end, the weather and illnesses are against us. We rearrange for another time. 

I sit in bed and wonder if I should edit my novel or write a blog. I have a vague idea that I'd like to write something about the way the loss reverberates still, eight years on, and how badly I am still affected by what happened, by the trauma, but when I open my blog, I realise that's what I wrote last year. I have not moved on much. I skim some more words off my manuscript and decide to walk anyway. 

It is wet in the park. I walk past family groups, gamely trudging in waterproofs along the Porter Valley and I am grateful to be alone. I buy myself a tea and remember the day that Paul and I walked along this path, holding hands and then separating as we passed my daughter's friend; my children didn't know we were an item until I told them I had found him dead. It was not how I planned to introduce him. 

My new partner and I live apart, coming together and separating like the paths through the woods. We have taken things slowly, stopping and starting, bumping like sticks along a rocky stream, getting stuck and freeing ourselves again. We have been talking recently about how we might find a way to spend more time together and have started browsing Rightmove, looking hypothetically for some ideal way in which to merge our lives though things regularly feel precarious. I am so afraid to love someone I could lose. But I look through the trees and think that this is where I would like to live and I ask Paul to wield some otherwordly magic and make it so. 

Familiar faces round the bend - Paul's family walking through the rain on Mother's Day. I've not seen them since pre-Covid and we stop to chat. We remember Paul and his mum who died shortly after her son. We talk about seals at Flamborough and the family burial plot and, for a moment, I'm back on the road to Bridlington with Paul alongside me pointing out the village where his ancestors dwelt. He is briefly resurrected in my mind and I am so happy to speak to someone who remembers him. They are happy too that I am with someone new. They have seen us on Facebook and tell me that Paul would approve. I think so too. He would be so pleased, they say. He would want you to be happy. I know they're right. I tell them I am afraid. You can never know what's around the corner, his sister says, we have to keep moving on. I nod and we walk our separate ways. 

The door to Shepherd's Wheel stands open. Fitting, I think, to power up the wheel on Blacksmith Paul's day. I watch the band rotate around the stones and remember standing here with Paul that day. I think of my great-grandfather working penknife blades on this river and of Paul hammering hot metal in a forge, of the way something so solid and rough can be transformed by heat into something shiny and new. I am like metal, I think, transformed, yes, but shaped by so much grief, loss running like blood through my veins, memories of those I've loved imprinted in my soul. Outside, I watch the water power the wheel as the river flows on, a tributary making its unstoppable way to join the sea. I walk to Paul's bench and see the flowers that his family have left. I touch the wood and imagine he knows that I'm there sharing a moment with his ghost. 

I am soaked to the skin when I get home. My daughter is up and surprises me with tea and fresh-baked free-from cookies. She presents me with a picnic set that she's made from clay and she's written a handmade card to 'the best mother I have ever encountered'. I am deeply touched. We have been through a lot, this girl and I. I read a book about motherhood in the bath, put my pyjamas back on and return to my bed to write. The boy will be home soon. 'I hope you've had a lovely day,' texts a friend. It is not a typical Mother's Day perhaps but this is not a typical life. Perhaps there is nothing typical. And it has been a treat, to be alone, without the heavy weight of expectations.

I browse Facebook. All of those posts. To the mothers and the non-mothers. To those who've lost a mother or hate their mother. Careful posts making sure no-one is left out. Do I need, I think, to add to all this noise? Someone I know posts a picture of her rainbow baby. She grieves still for the one she lost but is so grateful today to be a mother. I am happy for her. For some of us loss and love are constant bedfellows. And then a meme, words from Mary Oliver that echo regularly in my mind: 

'To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.'  

I try, Mary. I really do try. 

Seven year itch

Like the number 3, the number 7 seems to be a signifcant number to human beings in both the arts and sciences. Lucky number 7, The Seven Year Itch, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers...these are just a few of the ways the number 7 is referenced in our society. I've also read that the human body renews every seven years so that essentially, on a cellular level, we're not the same person we were seven years ago (though a quick Google tells me that this is not entirely accurate). 

I'm thinking of these things today not because I'm about to leave a partner out of boredom, but because a partner left me seven years ago on the 10th March when he tragically died. I'm also thinking about it because I remember reading something by Elisabeth Kubhler Ross which suggested that it takes seven years to recover from major loss. I've also read that Kubhler Ross' theory of the five stages of grief has since been adapted to a seven stage model, the stages being: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope, and processing. I've certainly experienced all seven of those phases in a cyclical pattern over and over, and when I revisit my blog and my memoir they're clearly reflected back at me. But have I completely processed the grief on this seven year anniversary? Have I fully recovered? Am I still the same person that I was back then? What if the cells that loved Paul, and the cells of me that loved him, no longer exist! That's a terrible idea! 

Regardless of the science, it's nonsense, of course. When we lose someone, people often say that they live on in such nebulous places as our memories and in our metaphorical (if not our literal) hearts. They do. Though I no longer think of Paul daily and don't actively grieve for him on a regular basis, I can sometimes remember being with him as if it were yesterday. I can still feel deep love for him and gratititude for the time we spent together and I can still feel deep sadness for his loss. But I no longer live with grief as a constant presence. In that sense, Kubler Ross is right and I have recovered. 

Though I wouldn't force it on anyone who isn't ready, recovery, I feel now, is right and proper. It is important to learn to live a full life again after loss, in honour of the person whose life was denied as much as anything. I think I am, mostly, succeeding. I have a beautiful life in many ways and I recently began a new relationship with another beautiful man who makes me very happy...when I allow myself to feel happy instead of terrified! The truth is that, though grief might be resolved by the seven year point, trauma lives on in the body, heart and mind and I'm not sure any amount of cellular renewal erases its imprint. My trauma tells me that to love another human being is the most devastatingly dangerous thing I can do. 

It's not just the loss of Paul that was truamatic, of course. I've experienced multiple losses and traumas in my life and many devastating consequences of relationships. All of it is triggered when I fall in love. I'm in the middle of having EMDR therapy for PTSD (following other recent major life dramas) and my therapist tells me that the Protectors, Managers and Fire Fighters in my brain are in overdrive. As she says, they smell burnt toast, believe the house is on fire and activate the alarms - alarms which say things like RUN! GET OUT NOW! They believe that, when you fall in love, terrifying things happen. It's an absolute nightmare for me and rather sad for the man who loves me that, while he is cockahoop, I'm finding multiple reasons to distance myself from him, push him away and that I am testing every possible aspect of our relationship like a person with OCD might check lights, switches and ovens. It's exhausting for me and hard for him but testimony to how wonderful he is that he puts up with it all with so much love and understanding that I can't help but adore him however petrified I am. Synchronicity and serendipity is strong too and, despite my fears, I believe there is something very good about the connection that we have. People keep telling me how happy I look and I can't deny that they're right! 

The irony is that it's the very fact that my new partner is so wonderful and makes me so happy that terrifies me! In fact, he reminds me of Paul in many ways. He's strong and kind, patient and funny. He loves words and being outside and making things. Sometimes he even looks like Paul, laughs like Paul, talks like Paul, knocks on the door like Paul. 'There's a strong pattern match,' my therapist says as she tells me again that, 'he's not Paul!' Just because Paul died, it doesn't mean I will lose my new love so soon. 

In the end, regardless, we don't conquer our fears by running away. We conquer them by facing them and, like a person conducting exposure therapy, I fall in love little by little and I let my new partner get closer day by day. Sometimes I have to retreat but I always come back. I feel the fear and do it anyway because this is what I gained from loving Paul. 'Would you ever wish you hadn't been with Paul?' my therapist asks and I don't hesitate. I wrote a whole book about how I would do it all again. And here I am, doing it all again. 'What's the worst that could happen?' I ask my demons. It doesn't bear thinking about. But I think about it anyway and I tell myself that I survived before and that I will continue to survive. Love is the most precious thing in the world. Life is for living. Every moment is special. That's the gift. That's the lesson. There's the post-traumatic growth. Am I the same person? No. I wouldn't want to be. I like the me that I am now. I am braver and stronger, I follow my instincts and intution more and I live my life more fully. 

I am grateful for the love I shared with Paul and grateful for the man who loves me now. My intuition tells me that Paul would love him too. Seven years on my grief is still an itch and this is me scratching it. I make space sometimes for sadness and memories. Because I remember Paul and all that he gave to me and to the people who loved him. And I remember the life that he lost too soon.

Seven years. It's unbelievable. Time goes so fast. Which is why we must make the most of it. Here's to love my friends. And to understanding that loss is a price worth paying. 

Two years on from the launch of Dear Blacksmith

 I’m in a reflective mood this week. There’s been a lot happening, a lot coming to a close and a lot of memories resurfacing. Two years ago, my memoir, Dear Blacksmith was published by Valley Press. In that same month, my children stopped seeing their father, precipitating two years of unimaginable trauma in family court, and a strange virus blew in from China, upending life in ways none of us could imagine.

As I sit now in my kitchen, wrapped in a blanket, remembering my book launch, the court case has just come to a conclusion, coronavirus seems finally to be retreating and I’m able to look forward with something like hope for the first time in a long time. It’s been an utterly bonkers two years.

I’m listening to the playlist from the launch. Prince is singing Purple Rain and I’m recalling that the last poem in my book features a reference to the song. It’s a piece written in the voice of my lost love, Blacksmith Paul, a message from beyond the grave, willing me to keep going. The last words of the book come from a collage that he made with me on New Years' Eve 2019 and they go like this:

remember to explore

keep on keeping on

you were my inspiration, let me be yours

and most of all,

love.

P.s sorry about the mess.

Boy, was it a mess!

It was a brief and passionate love affair. The kind of romance that books should be written about, set against the sweeping backdrop of the Derbyshire moors where an eccentric hero fell in love with a single mum, rescuing her from her mundane, urban life and then dramatically dropping dead. It was not a book I wanted to write. As I wrote at the time, ‘the end just happened in the middle.’ I was looking for a happy ever after in a great romance novel not a brutal short story. I was definitely not looking for a memoir of trauma and grief; I’d already had enough of that.

Still, it is a beautiful book and a beautiful record of some of the best and worst times of my life. I was proud when I held the book in my hands and proud as I sat on that stool reading from the book in front of a huge audience of people, many of whom had been my safety net when I was in the depths of a kind of grief that floored me over and over again. But I was also sad, deeply sad, because the story of that wonderful love affair was over, packaged in a four hundred page book, wrapped in the photograph that Paul had taken when I thought we were on the brink of forever, and I was left alone to carry on without him, to write a new narrative. And what kind of a narrative do you write when you’ve loved so deeply and lost so traumatically? How do you keep going and rebuild?

Mostly, it seems, you keep going because you have to. But, I also hung onto the lessons that I learned with Paul. I try to stay in the moment, continue to explore possibility and potential and to look for the good in every day. I reach for the light and spend my days (where I can) doing only the things I love with the people that I love. For me this has meant a lot of writing and time spent helping other writers to find their voices, a vocation that fills me with joy on a daily basis. It’s meant the founding of The Writers Workshop, a wonderful nurturing community. It’s also meant spending a lot of time in nature, walking and swimming and escaping to the sea as often as possible. Most of all, it’s been time spent with the amazing friends who have stayed by my side through the multiple appalling events and situations of my life, and especially time with my beloved children. The three of us have been to the kind of hell I didn’t know existed over this last two years but at least we have been there together and there have been many moments of joy and laughter amidst the pain. The memories of halcyon days of ‘home educating’ in the garden will stay with me forever.

I have kept on keeping on because what else can I do when I have the privilege to still be alive? The memory of Paul will always inspire me to keep striving to live my best life. It’s a gift only available to those who have experienced extreme pain. And love? Love infuses everything I do. The only way to counter the darkness in the world is to keep loving. I’ve learned that love takes many forms: the love of friends and family, love for my writing community, compassion for myself and the kindness of strangers. I strive to be a kind stranger always. And I’m proud to be the kind of strange I am.

As for romance, it’s not easy to find that kind of love again as a lone parent battered by grief and trauma, but I keep looking anyway, periodically and half-heartedly. I keep looking because, though I’m ok on my own and full to the brim with self-love, there are some things that only a lover can provide. It would be nice to have a little bit more joy and just a little bit of help from a partner.

Sadly, there aren’t many men who come anywhere close to meeting my requirements these days and even the few that I’ve liked have ended up being disappointing. One was intimidated by my ‘wonderful life,’ and another was put off by my ‘stressful life’. Six years on, I’m unbelievably strong but still vulnerable and any kind of disappointment can floor me. Despite therapy, trauma is still easily triggered and when the last man I was exploring an amazing romantic potential with stopped messaging, I immediately panicked that he was dead. I’m still anxious. My reality is probably too much for him. I don’t blame him; my reality is too much for me too! He’s afraid that he would let me down. Which is what Paul also said. And so I’m cast back again to what I had and what I lost. Paul and I were afraid to take a risk, afraid to fall in love, afraid of our messy circumstances. I’m so glad we took the chance. I know that love is all that matters in this world and I know I’ll take that risk again, one day when someone special wants to risk it too.

In the meantime, I keep writing and loving my way through the precious, wonderful, stressful and horrendously messy days of my life. Two years on, I can still be sad but I’m glad to be alive and grateful, so grateful, for the gift of love and for writing - the one true love that never lets me down.

My book was massively affected by the pandemic. I never even saw it in the 180 bookshops that stocked it. If you’d like to read it, it’s available from all the usual places and also via my website to UK readers.

One line a day

Today is new notebook day. 

I love new notebook day. All of those blank pages, all of the possibilites, the stories yet unwritten. A new notebook holds promise for the future and the opportunity to start afresh. There are no mistakes in a new notebook.

Though today is the first day of writing in my book, I've actually had it for a while. It was a present from my friend Bryony. I remember her bringing it to me in my new workshop space last year. When I look at it, it conjures memories: the smell of fresh paint and colourful prints, the yellow chest of treasures over in the corner of the room, sitting with my friend drinking tea - simple pleasures that seem so far away. I'm not sure when she gave it to me but I know it was before: before the difficult family events of this year, before my book launch, before the virus.

A year ago today, I was sitting on a stage talking about the book of this blog with another dear friend, Rosie. Numbers in the audience were dwindling as rumours of a virus spread and later, in the pub, we sat alone and knew that things were going to change. 

It was five years ago today that Paul died.  And everything changed.

I never expected to write those words: five years ago. I don't know what I expected to happen but not that. Perhaps I thought that his death was the end of my story. At the time I didn't want to believe that life would go on and I certainly didn't want to hear about silver linings. A life without him seemed inconceivable. Now, sometimes, it seems inconceivable that he, that we, were there at all. My life, my story has continued regardless. Grief isn't dimished, they say, but new life grows around and from loss. Though we don't want it to happen, it happens nonetheless. If there has to be trauma, it's just as well that post-traumatic growth follows. If there must be clouds, I'm grateful now for their silver linings.

As I open up my notebook, the world is opening up again too. My children are returning to school. Rosie and I are planning a meeting to think about re-opening the workshop space. Anxiety rises as the rain falls and the writers in my Zoom workshop feel on edge again, minds scattered, thoughts adrift. We are all of us buffeted by storms, drowning in loss. Today I am full to the brim but low on words. My writers talk of writing as an anchor and a life raft. We share stories and feel ourselves righted, as we always do, held up by writing and by each other. 

My eldest is feeling anxious too as we sit chatting over our last home ed lunch. School is looming and new and familiar challenges litter the landscape like ice bergs. 'Things will always keep changing,' I say, 'for better and for worse. It is the only thing we can be certain of.'

I close my new notebook. 

One line a day it says on the front. 

I think of Paul and the words he used to say: Keep buggering on.

This is how life unfolds, this is how books get written, this is how things change.

This is how I survive. 

                                    

If you'd like to read the book that launched a year ago, Dear Blacksmith can be bought here.

What grief taught me about how to survive in times like these

These are strange times aren't they? I've heard that phrase a lot recently and it can't be denied. These are strange times indeed. Another thing I've heard recently is that we have entered a time of collective grief. I get that. The life we knew has been turned upside down suddenly and we are losing things that we, in our privileged Western lives, took for granted. Our birthday parties are being cancelled. Our summer holiday plans have been destroyed. Our ability to drive to a beauty spot for a picnic has been withdrawn.

Of course, though we're collectively being impacted, we're each impacted differently. We're each losing different things. The mother on maternity leave is losing the life of coffee mornings and baby groups she'd been looking forward to. My twelve year old is losing her new-found freedom. Students are missing nights out and exams. Some will miss their final year of school or graduation. Grandparents are missing their grandchildren. Many people are losing the activities that helped them to feel sane and connected. And, in case we forget, there are other people who are losing their lives to this silent killer and others who are being denied the opportunity to say goodbye. That's a whole new layer to grief.

There's so much that could be written on the subject, so much that is being written. About how much more impacted the people living in small flats with no gardens are. About how horrendous it must be for people who are trapped at home with abusive parents or partners. About how this is situation is overwhelmingly worse for the people who are being forced to keep travelling on public transport, who are working on the frontline, who have lost their jobs, who don't have an Ocado reserved pass. There's no question that this is a lot easier for people like me. I'm a single parent and that's hard but I'm privileged. I live in a lovely house with a lovely garden in a leafy part of town. And, though I've lost my usual way of making a living and am not eligible for as much government support as some, I can adapt my business to work online and I have savings. I am incredibly grateful.

What I want to write about though, is how I believe this is easier for me not just because I'm privileged, but because I've already lived through so much grief and trauma. To be honest, I'm so accustomed to my life being derailed, that this new reality feels relatively easy to absorb. I'm a bit peeved that every time I think life might get better, something else goes wrong but this is how I've come to expect life to go. I'm a bit bored and a lot tired but, as a single parent, I'm used to that. I'm used to not being able to go out when I want to and I'm used to juggling children and working from home. It's not a dramatic change for me. Mostly though, I'm familiar with having my world turned upside down overnight and to having to adjust. I'm used to having to survive in a world that is not of my choosing. I can apply everything I've learned from the loss of my partner to this new situation and, so far, it's really helping.

Here's what I learned. I share it in case it helps you too.

We are not in control of life. We we can plan for the future but we can never guarantee that the future we plan for will come to fruition. The future is always unwritten and unpredictable. When my partner died, I stopped thinking of the future and learned to get through each day one at a time. That serves me well now. There's no point, for me, in wondering when this period will end or what I will do when it does. I just get up and set about getting through each day one at a time. That helps me. Don't get me wrong, I fantasise about hugging people and going on dates and on holidays but mostly I just think about what to do in this moment and the next. This is how life is built.

Even in the worst of times, there are always things that make us feel a bit better. We should lean towards those things and structure our days around them. Writing makes me feel better. It grounds me. Doing my work as a writing facilitator makes me feel better. I know that I should be gentle with myself and work less but working gives me a sense of purpose and helps me to feel useful, and feeling useful helps me to keep getting up in the morning. Being useful is something we can turn our attention to now. How can we play our part in helping someone worse off? When I experienced loss, writing about it and sharing my journey helped others and helping others made me feel better. Sharing writing prompts helps others now. It's the thing I can do that improves the lives of other people and that helps me too.

Being outside helps me to feel better. Everything feels more manageable with your feet or your hands on the earth and your eyes lifted to the sky. Exercise makes me feel better. I can't swim at the moment so I've returned to doing yoga. Moving my body helps to shift my mindset.

Connecting with people makes me feel better. So, I programme in those video calls, even though it's not the same, even though all this screen time is tiring. And I make the most of all of those events that I can now attend. Like so many people: the elderly and those with disabilities, single parents are no longer excluded from cultural events. I love that! And I stand in my garden and talk to my neighbours from two metres away. It makes me feel better. The truth is that this grief is so much easier than the grief I experienced before because we're in it together and everyone wants to chat to me. I don't feel nearly as isolated now as I did four years ago.

The sense of community is something I'm really grateful for. That there are always things to be grateful for and that beauty can be found even in the darkest days is something I learned in grief. Looking for the beauty is another thing that makes me feel better. In early grief, I hated being told to look for silver linings but, over time, I became expert at it and there are a multitude of beautiful things to notice now, especially if we can be outside and slow down. The sense of community as people clap the NHS, the tiny wonder of blossom unfurling, the laughter of children, a conversation with a neighbour that I never really knew before.

Being mindful is a game-changer. Giving your full attention to whatever you're engaged in can calm anxiety and make everything a source of wonder. As a child, I could lie on the ground and be completely absorbed in the movement of an insect on the grass. Those insects are still there now, if we stop and look. Even mundane tasks can be more enjoyable if pay attention to them, if we really feel the water on our hands as we wash them - again. And it's good to lose ourselves in any activity that absorbs us and that takes us away from what's in our minds, to cultivate that sense of flow by writing, dancing, playing music.

In grief I also learned a hard lesson for a high-achiever like me. It's a lesson that I've learned from chronic illness and single parenting too. I learned that I couldn't do it all and that I had to slow down. I learned to pace myself. Like grief, this is likely to be a marathon, not a sprint. It's ok to spend hours doing nothing much at all. My son has just spent five hours playing Minecraft. It's not ideal but he'll be ok. I will make him exercise after lunch and we'll play a game or do some baking. He knows that he is loved and that he is safe. That's what matters most. In grief, I learned to only pay attention to the things and the people that mattered most.

Still, it sucks, doesn't it? It sucks that our family holiday is cancelled and that I can't go on my writing retreat next week. It sucks that I'm on my own with no partner and that I've no idea when I can next go on a date (though grateful, so grateful that I'm not stuck with the wrong partner at this time!) It's hard work doing everything on my own. This is a difficult time, no question. We can't always be Pollyanna. And that's the other thing I learned from grief. I learned that it was ok to be honest. That it was ok to reach out to other people and say "I'm struggling with this". Just because other people have it worse doesn't take away from the reality that we're all finding this hard, that we're all losing our own particular things, that we're all experiencing grief. Grief needs to be expressed in order to be healed. So, I'm expressing myself. It helps me feel better. I hope it helps you too.

Something to be grateful for - the hotel garden in walking distance of my house.

This is not the story that I wanted to write

My book arrived in the post this week. What a thing of beauty it is. It is heavy and smooth in my hands, the paper has the lovely off-white tint of, well, real books and it has my name on the front in big letters. It has only just struck me as I sit here looking at it, that it also has a picture of me on the front cover. That little figure in the yellow cardigan walking poetically alongside an abandoned house - that's me. 

I remember the day that the photograph was taken. It was four and a half years ago now. How can it have been so long? I was having the most wonderful day with a man I was about to fall in love with. I didn't know yet that he took beautiful photographs, just knew that in his company I felt righted, aligned, deeply happy. I miss feeling like that. He sent me the photo later on that day as a memento of 'a magical day'. Seven months later, he died. Just like that. Unthinkable then. Unthinkable, even now. 

I took a selfie with the book. It's what authors do. It's a lot of work to write a book and the first sighting of the actual thing is a moment to be cherished and celebrated. I shared the photo on social media and got the expected outpouring of enthusiastic comments: how exciting, how proud you must be, enjoy! I should perhaps have cracked open the champagne but it was a Monday and I had my kids to drive around and no-one to drink it with, plus I'm on a stupid detox diet. I showed it to the kids anyway and they were as momentarily impressed as kids can be on seeing the book that their mum wrote about the death of a man they barely knew. They turned to find their names in the acknowledgements and went back to their screens while I went to cook the tea. It was a bit of an anti-climax on the whole. 

The truth is that I'm not really sure that I feel like celebrating anyway. I'm not really sure what I'm feeling at all. Proud, yes, but also anxious, sad and overwhelmed. My story is going back out into the world and I am going with it, on the cover and between the pages, on the radio and in newspaper articles and at literary events. It's daunting. There was a time when all I wanted to do was tell the story of my heartache, when I all wanted to do was talk about loss. But I'm not in that place anymore. Or I wasn't until my words became a book. And now I'm going back there again. 

I read it cover to cover on Monday night once the children were in bed, just to check that the words were all where they should be. They were. All of the memories, all of the metaphors for grief. They were all there, bound up in four hundred pages of poetry and prose. Of course, I thought, it could be edited further. Of course, I thought, it's a bit self-involved. But it's pretty good, I think. Yes, I am proud. 

As I read it though, these phrases jumped out at me. 

This is not the story that I wanted to write. 

I could make this a bestselling memoir and then what? You would still be dead. 

I didn't want a memoir of loss - I wanted a living love that lasted. 

It's true. 

The book is another ending, my journey tied up with the journey of the book. It's done now. That episode of my life is over, summed up in one neat volume. But like all of the other endings on the journey, it is a false ending. Because I will keep talking about it and writing about it. Because I will always have to live with it. Because it's part of who I am. Because it will never really be over. Because I would never want to completely leave it, leave him, behind. 

'His place in your life is documented and that's something very special,' said one friend. It made me happy to think of it like that. I like that I have memorialised our relationship. 'Paul would be very proud,' said another. Would he? I don't know. I hope he would. I hope he is. I hope he's pretty chuffed to see his photo used as a book cover. It's nice to see his photo and my name together like that. 'We should make a book of your photos and my words,' I said, the night before he died. 'We will,' he said. And here it is. I hope he's proud. I hope it helps other people. I'm glad that I wrote it. But this isn't the story that I wanted to write.