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.
