Because you love me/ the shape of me in you

Because you love me, I will find the strength to carry on. Because you lost your life, I must somehow find a way to value mine. 

One day, when time has passed, I hope that people will be able to look at me and see your presence instead of your absence. 

At the moment, your absence is more tangible than my own being. I am just fragments of myself stitched together with pain. I am sad eyes, grey skin, tear-tracks and shaking limbs with a gaping wound where my heart used to be. Your loss is threaded through every fibre of my body. This body that you loved. 

One day, perhaps the world will see the shape of you in the way I can keep loving even though I have no reason to trust love. In the way I will build a new life moment by moment and never give up hope even though life has let me down so many times. In the way I value myself, knowing that, at least once, someone whole-heartedly understood me and loved me and thought I was wonderful. That someone wanted to stay even though their wishes were denied.

You nearly gave up hope yourself but you picked yourself back up and started to live again. You felt I was your reward for your faith in yourself and in life. I know you wouldn't have missed it for the world even though life was so unbelievably cruel to you again. I wonder if you could keep going if it was I who was gone instead of you? I don't know. But I know that you would want me to keep on going. 

If people could see you in me they would see a person whose heart was still open. Who loved and lived until the end. Who cherished the little things and a moment of beauty amidst the pain. Who kept on learning and exploring. Who laughed in spite of all the madness and sadness of the world.

I hope one day that will be me. It won't be today. It won't be tomorrow. But, one day. Maybe.

In response to For Grief by John O'Donohue

I am yet to wake up happy. Mornings still feel unbearably hard. I get that tense, sick, nervous feeling that you get on the day of an exam, or a long journey. or the day of a funeral, every day.

I remember waking with you on the day of my mum's funeral, feeling myself curled tight, eyes squeezed shut, hoping to block out the day, not sure if I could face it. I managed to shuffle myself across the bed and snuffle my head onto your chest. 'I don't want to go,' I said. You wrapped me up in your warmth and at some point we emerged, donned the uniform of grief and prepared ourselves to face it.

On the morning of your funeral, I woke alone, got the kids to school and then got ready to say goodbye again to your body, although I had said goodbye in person the day before. I had sat with your coffin, grateful for a moment to know where you were and to have you next to me, returned from hospitals and post-mortems, even though you were in a wooden box. I had talked to you and cried on that wooden box. When I had my head on that box, close perhaps to where your head might have been, when I was saying how sorry I was that you had been all alone and that I hadn't got to you sooner, I felt your coffin lurch. I thought it was going to fall off its stand. I felt you were trying to reach me. I was frightened for a moment but figured it was probably in my mind, or my body, that I had seen you dead and you had been through numerous tests in search of a cause. There was no way you were alive in there. If you were trying to reach me, I knew you would be telling me not to blame myself. There was nothing I could have done. I sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It's the song I sing to my children, the one I sang to you on your microphone in your music studio the weekend before you died. It seems like an odd thing to do but it felt right at the time.

I wore a dress that I thought you would like, collected my notes and put the yin yang ball that you gave me on my birthday in my pocket. It seemed like a strange present at the time but I have carried it with me ever since. It jangles when I walk, keeps you close.

Speaking at your funeral was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. I was speaking to a congregation of people that I had never met. But I had to do it. I had to tell the world what you meant to me, couldn't bear to have you summed up like a mediocre cv by someone in a suit who didn't know you. I was scared that people would view me as an impostor. What could a relative newcomer tell all those people who had been in your life for the 52 years when we weren't together? But in the end I felt embraced by the warmth and gratitude of those people. They loved you too.

The weather of grief is as turbulent as the weather outside my window. On Tuesday night, I thought the grief might kill me. I was crying so hard that I couldn't breathe. And then, yesterday I wrote about that feeling, the feeling of the waves and the water, and then I wrote some more about the signs that you are around, l led my writing group and only cried at the end when someone asked me how I was, I played with the children. And last night I slept a peaceful sleep and woke with that same lurching feeling, that same desire to roll back over into your arms, back into the duvet. But I dragged myself from the bed and I feel sort of normal again. The sun came out while I walked the dog. I looked up into the clouds and felt its warmth. Then I picked up a pure white, baby-soft feather from the path. I can go on.

I know the grief will come again. I know I can't predict when. I know that it will probably be in a matter of hours rather than days. But I know that after every storm, there is calm. I hope that one day I will sit in that calm with you alongside me and know that it will be ok. It makes me think of the yin yang ball. Without darkness, there can be no light. Everything is interdependent. Our love and my grief are fire and water at the same time.

I  know I will never get over it. I know I will never forget. I'm not sure I want to wake up happy without you. But I would like the last lines of the poem: to be able to enter the hearth in my soul where my loved one has awaited my return all the time. I know that you are there. I hope you will wait for me to return.

For Grief

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.

Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto that black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed,
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

What happened after

I suppose the first thing was also the last thing. That conversation about clouds. It was like you gave me a place to look for you when you were gone and, when I'm mired in grief, I try to remember to look up occasionally and I smile. There is always something beautiful to see when you look up. You showed me that; you always stopped to notice the beauty in the world. Two weeks before you died, we were walking in the park and you stopped in the middle of the path and squeezed my hand, told me to pause. You looked up then with your eyes shut and your arms open and said, "feel the sun." It's a lasting image in my mind.

The weather has been crazy since you left, or maybe I just notice it more - the prevalence of rainbows at key moments, the beautiful sunsets, the incongruence of hail in April. It is easy for me to imagine you're behind it all. If there were a God and he were a man, he would be a man like you. There was something truly larger than life, elemental, about you.

And then, things started to happen. I was searching through the rubble in your house and started to find things. First I found loving descriptions of our times together in scrappy notebooks. After the first day we spent together you wrote that you were 'strangely smitten by this intelligent, proudly beautiful woman'. You said, 'I yearn for her completely, physically and emotionally'. It was nothing I didn't know but so comforting to read. And then I found a dusty bag of runes. I remembered the time on the beach when you were collecting smooth round pebbles to make your own runes and I thought about picking them up. But I hesitated and left them sitting on your living room floor. When I got home, my daughter was reading a book by Rick Riordan. She started talking to me and showing me pictures of runes in the book. I didn't know she knew anything about runes. I told her that you had some and she was wild with excitement. So I went back to fetch them for her. She was fascinated by them, picked one out, said, 'this is Perthrow. It's my favourite.' I asked her if she knew its meaning and she shook her head so we Googled it on my phone. I have memorised what it said because it felt like you were sending me a message: The beginning and the ending are fixed. What's in between is yours. Nothing is in vain. All is remembered.

At the bonfire that we held after the funeral I found another piece of paper in the bathroom. It had scribbled phone numbers and dates and lists of jobs on it, but amongst the practical notes there was a poem you had written, years ago, I guess. It said these words:

Rain falling on glass,
The white sky is over my head, 
winds across my mind. 
My body is thought.
In time I will be stretched across space and fill the void.
Is this not our reason?

Skies, winds, thoughts. They are the places I feel you close. You have left a space and a massive void in my life but these memories and strange synchronicities, sometimes, temporarily patch up the hole. 

But I'm going too fast. I was always going too fast. You helped to slow me down. 

A couple of weeks after you died, I was due to run a writing retreat in Wales. In the end I didn't run it but I went anyway because what else was I supposed to do? The children were with their dad and this was my one opportunity in the year to go to my favourite place on earth with friends who promised to look after me. And they did. One day I went for a walk down to the beach. I was looking at clouds again at the water's edge and crying my heart out. I was thinking about the beautiful photograph that you would have taken if you were there. Eventually, I dried my eyes and walked back to join my friends on the path, where a man with the largest camera I've ever seen, found me. 'My lady on the beach,' he said. 'I didn't expect to find you.' He told me that he had just taken the most beautiful picture of me sitting on the pebbles. He showed me the photo. I cried and told him what it meant to me and he said he would send it. It felt like you were looking out for me through the kindness of strangers. 

Back in the kitchen in Wales, a friend asked me how I was doing with the arrangements for your funeral. It was a stressful business planning your funeral with a family that I had only just met, from a remote part of Wales with barely a phone signal. I was having trouble organising the readings. 'Well,' said my fellow writer, 'just keep buggering on.' It was the phrase that you used all the time - KBO for short. It was like you were speaking through her voice. I feel like I really smiled then for the first time since you died. It gave me the strength to keep going. 

Back home, I had a message from a friend. She had had a dream about you. She said you were in your own artists' studio, looking young and healthy. She had spoken to you. You'd told her that you really happy with me and that things were going well. She said you had a crown of purple and yellow flowers around your head and that you told her that we shouldn't let our days and nights be mountains to climb but that we should enjoy life. She woke up crying. The next day, she came to my house. I had the funeral celebrant's card on the kitchen table. She looked surprised. 'What's that card?' she said. 'Those were the flowers on his head.' The motif on the business card was of tiny purple and yellow flowers. 

And so it has carried on. One night I was lying in bed crying and I felt movement in my hair. Immediately I thought it was you. I had a shivery sensation. But then the pragmatist in me took over and thought it might just be nits or a breeze, although the window was shut. When I saw your mum she asked me if I'd had any signs that you might be around. She told me that she'd spoken to friends who had had the same sensation after loved ones had passed, of movement in their hair. I found myself looking up common signs from spirits and found it was at the top of the list. I made note of the others. 

The next day, I was sitting in a playground while my children played. I was talking to a friend about you when a beautiful butterfly landed on my hand. It rested there for ages and children came over to look. It was one of the signs on my list. 

And then I started finding coins, pennies. I picked them up, figuring I needed good luck. I found one every day for a week. It was on the list. 

So I thought I'd set you a challenge. If this is you, I said, show me something else. And a feather floated down in front of me. Feathers are on the list. Though not so strange in the circumstance; I was in the Botanical Gardens. I got up and started to walk towards home along the busy high street. There was a trail of feathers all the way along it. It led me into the park. I needed to get to school to pick up my children but I followed them anyway. The previous day (the day of the butterfly) my daughter had lost her school bag in the park along with her most precious cuddly panda toy which I needed to find. Help me find him, I asked you. I followed the feathers all the way to the cafe and went to the lost property box hoping to find Pandie. Instead I found a book called 'Revelations of Divine Love'. I'm not normally a thief but I picked it up and took it with me. I felt it was for me. When I finally got to school my daughter emerged with Pandie in her arms. Someone had found her bag while they were walking their dog and they happened to be a friend of a teacher from school who, on her day off, had gone specially to return Edie's panda. It felt beautiful. 

I feel a calmness when these things happen and when I go to the places we went and when I am alone in nature. Last Saturday I took a trip to Redmires where we first walked. Just as I was arriving your mum phoned. She was pleased I was going there. She said you'd spent many happy days there as a family. We were talking about memorial benches and how she couldn't get in touch with the right department by the beach where we have discussed scattering your ashes. It's a long way for her to go and a big job. I said I'd have a look online when I got home. I got lost on my walk, didn't find the place I was looking for but as I was walking back along the road, I saw a man. He was about your age, sitting on a bench surrounded by daffodils, his head upturned to feel the spring sunshine, eyes shut. We should put a bench here, I thought, so that your mum, who can't walk far, can come and sit on it and feel the sun. I phoned her and she thought it was a wonderful idea. I felt happy and I felt your happiness radiating down on me as if you were pleased that you had set me a treasure hunt and I had succeeded. 

There has been a lot of synchronicity. And synchronicity is on the list. 

The space between breaths

It's true that it is mostly waves: brutal, battering, crashing waves that leave me winded. But sometimes there is a space between the waves, when the sun comes out and the water laps gently at my feet and there is peace. In the peace I know that you are still there and that the love we shared has not diminished but brightened in the darkness of loss.

It is at those times that I feel myself weaving some kind of comforting narrative from what happened before and what happened after. Synchronicity is strong in this story. Synchronicity brings some kind of order in chaos, just like writing. Words moved around on a page distract my mind from the enormity of it all, make it temporarily more manageable, give a form to this amorphous pain. It helps a little to create something from this absence. Although the writing doesn't change anything. I didn't want a plot for another novel. I wasn't hoping for material for poems. I wanted the man I loved to stay here with me. Writing doesn't change that.

This is what happened before.

Looking back it seems that there were portents all along the way. It is in the films we watched together: Truly Madly Deeply, It's a Wonderful Life, Finding Neverland and in the poems that I wrote. I wrote about journeys taken in which we didn't know where we we're going, spoke of doors that we would never walk through, described us as 'racing time around the bend'. We didn't know how little time we had but somehow it feels like it was there in the way we cherished every single moment that we were together. In the moment, we were always so very happy. We only got confused when we tried to talk of the future. It was like we couldn't see it somehow. It didn't exist.

Once when we were lying in bed together I asked you what you were thinking. You said that you were thinking that if I ever left you, you would have to join the foreign legion. "You're the woman I want to die with," you said.

The week before you died, we were discussing whether to introduce you properly to my children. You wanted them to come to your bonfire so that you could show me what fun you were with kids, what a great stepdad you might become. I had been ready to do it but suddenly I couldn't. You were always scatty but that week you were extra forgetful and it was worrying me. I asked you if there was something wrong with your brain. You laughed it off. That week I met a woman whose husband had just suffered from a brain injury and my daughter wouldn't stop talking about my own brain-injured ex - it was the anniversary of his leaving. It was my first mother's day without a mum. And suddenly it was all too much.

"There's no rush," you said. But that evening, the neighbours had a bonfire and I told the children about yours. They were excited and asked if we could light the paper lanterns you had brought. And I found myself sending you a text and asking if you wanted to come and meet them and let off the lanterns, all the while wondering what I was doing. And you came straight round and made offerings to the gods with my children and they loved you, of course. You wrote on the lanterns with them. One for my deceased parents and one to the Greek gods. You wrote a message to Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, and you sent them up into the sky. "Can Paul stay?" my daughter asked. So you stayed with her for a while and watched a film and when she was in bed, we hugged. "I love you," I said. "I love you too," you replied, holding me close. And that was the last time I saw you.

But not the last time we spoke. The night before you died, I sent you a poem that I had written about clouds. You sent me a beautiful photo you had taken. Something about its beauty made me cry. We talked on messenger about doing something with my writing and your photographs. We talked of coffee table books, fridge magnets, greetings cards. "We must do something," I said. "We will," you said. And then I lectured you. "You're hugely talented," I said, "and hiding your light under a pile of other people's cast-off junk. Break free blacksmith." I didn't mean you to take me literally.

I asked you if you liked my poem and you said you did. "I love the poem, I love clouds and I love you," you said. And that was the last time we spoke. Poignant, poetic, the end of a beautiful love story. And the beginning of grief and a life without you.

The weight of grief

The weight of Grief - Celeste Roberge

Sometimes, I guess, it does feel like this. Heavy, like it could bring you to your knees right there in the middle of whatever you're doing. Like your whole body is made of stones that rub painfully together if you try to move. The weight is too much and movement becomes impossible.

But, mostly, I still think it is waves, invisible waves that seem to bypass everyone else, but target only you and knock you over with their force, until you can't breathe and all you can see is blackness. And if there are stones, they are being hurled at your head.

Sometimes I have an image of the sea with a walkway reaching out into the ocean. If I look back to the beach, that is where I see my parents and my past. They waved me off to make my own way in the world. And then there were the people who walked alongside me for a while but they took a different turning. They preferred to walk on the cliff path or stayed safely on the promenade. But you were walking alongside me and walking with me into the future and suddenly you are gone. And the walkway stops abruptly at the edge of an unforgiving sea and I am left screaming into the darkness. There is nothing to hold onto out there. There is no desert island to swim to. There is no boat to rescue me and the walkway behind me has crumbled into the sea. There is nowhere left to go. I feel completely lost and alone, unanchored with nothing in the distance to reach for.

Frantically, I search for something to build a future from, weaving sticks and seaweed together, hoping to make a raft. But it is futile because sticks remind me of you and seaweed reminds me of you and you have the string.

I need someone to hold onto, someone who can hold me through this pain and torment, someone who can make this bearable. But that person is gone too. There is no harbour in your arms anymore. All is sea and darkness, and, yes, sometimes, the weight of rocks.

How would you love me in this?

You wouldn't tell me to hold it in, this pain, this love. Big emotions didn't frighten you. You would open up your arms like a harbour to hold the swirling waters, stay present while I cried. When I cried about my mum's death or the past or the contents of my mangled brain, you would hold it all. 'I've got you,' you would say. Perhaps you've still got me, now. When it felt like everything might fall apart, I would say, 'keep hanging in there' and you'd mimic hanging from a cliff by the tips of your fingers with mock-terror on your face. You would make me laugh and feel grateful at the same time. I couldn't scare you away. You weren't going anywhere.

Anything I needed was ok by you. If I needed to talk, you would stay up all night listening and if I needed space and rest, you would happily make yourself scarce. Too scarce that last week as it happened. Why did it have to be that week that you went?

But you'd tell me not to torture myself about that as well. You wouldn't want me to make things worse with all these what ifs. Things are bad enough without me heaping guilt onto the fire. You were always so kind. You would want me to be kind too.

You would tell me to get some sleep and to eat properly. You would ask me to bake some flapjack even though you can't eat it anymore. 'Don't stop eating your delicious flapjack just because I died,' you would say. 'It's so nutritious. It will keep you going.' You would send me soothing music to listen to and tell me to watch Neighbours even though it's a ridiculous habit. You would, of course, tell me to 'keep buggering on' or KBO for short. You would bring me a crossword to do to stop my mind from going down unhelpful roads and you would write me messages saying, 'send me a poem, Writer Beverley'. You would love that I'm writing my way through this.

You wouldn't mind that I'm blurting out the contents of my soul on the internet. It wasn't your style but you loved my writing and you would be touched by the comments of support, pleased that through my words, I can reach out to others and touch their hearts as well.

You would take me for walks in beautiful places that soothe my soul and you would tell me to spend time with the people who make me feel better, who make me feel good about myself. And you would tell me to have no care for people who upset me. At the funeral, one of your friends told me that something he'd learned from you is that you always left the party without saying goodbye. He liked the way you did your own thing. You left this earth in the same way, completely unexpectedly, with no warning, no goodbyes. You would encourage me to do what I need to do to feel ok. To be on my own if I want to and to duck out of social engagements if I can't handle them.

The last time we went out you made up a hand signal. Four finger taps on your palm meant 'I need to go now,' three taps was 'let's go soon,', two taps was 'let's make love'. I did two taps just for fun and you pulled me to you at the party and said, 'Really? Right now?' And then we left. We could only do so much socialising. We went home to be alone together with our love.

I will remember that when I'm out and it all gets too much now, to say to myself, 'I've done well, but it's time to go home now, back to the harbour of my memories of your love.' And you will welcome me home and make me turmeric tonic and tuck me up in bed.

The other side

At the end of life there was a door.
It's a cliche I know, but that's how it was
and you know me, I love a door,
can't resist the allure of hardwood and sturdy hinges,
will always want to know what's on the other side.
I am "insatiably curious,"
you said so yourself in the eulogy,
(beautiful words, by the way. And, thank you.)
I went through that door before I realised
that I couldn't get back to the life I loved
on the other side.

It hurts to see how you have cried, my darling.
"May I call you darling?" I once said.
Hurting you was the last thing on earth I wanted to do
but it was the last thing on earth I did.
I never meant to cause you any sorrow,
never meant to cause you any pain.
Of course, Prince and Bowie are here with me
and we party like it's 1999 again
but I hate to see you lost down there
in the purple rain.

Yes, we still have feelings on the other side.

It broke my heart to leave you.
Did you feel me trying to reach you
as you cried on the coffin that you'd helped to choose -
it was a good one, by the way, and the flowers,
I can see why you picked them.
Lovely message too. So perfect.
You always were so perfect
for me.

It was agony to feel you on the other side
of that heavy door of wood,
unable to put my arms around you and tell you,
"It's ok. I understand. There was nothing you could have done."
I couldn't get to you just as you couldn't have got to me.
I know you felt the jolt of my soul straining for yours -
I'm sorry that I scared you.
Thank you for the comfort of the things you sent me,
the things they slipped through that wooden door,
that I have taken with me,
although, in reality, I took it all.

I'm so pleased you see my messages.
It's as much of a mystery to me as it is to you,
how somehow both of us knew
that this was where we were going to end up.
We couldn't see the future and yet we laid a trail
that I see you following now
like a puzzle or a treasure hunt.
We loved that kind of stuff.

Yes, the words on the collage are for you
and the words on the paper in the bathroom -
thanks for sharing them.
I'm so glad you found the ones I wrote about you
though there are other things I wish you hadn't found
and I really am sorry about the mess.
You know I was trying to clean up my act.
I thought I had more time.

I'm doing fine though, rest assured.
I miss you of course but I'm the lucky one, I know
because I can follow you everywhere you go.
I still touch your hair as you lay sleeping
and I watch you as you swim and walk.
I listen to you talk, so much of it about me.
I read your beautiful words
and hear your beautiful voice.
If I had a choice, I would hold you still
but some things are out of my control.
I am just a soul.

I can't hold your body but I'm by your side and in your heart.
It's that quantum superposition that I wrote about.
I can be in more than one place simultaneously,
both alive and dead at the same time;
Schrodinger didn't know quite what he was onto with that cat.
I am everywhere and with everyone
if they take the time to look.
I'm in the starry skies and in the dark blue sea.
I am part of you and still somewhat me.

Keep your eyes open, darling -
I will call you darling, if that's ok -
and please don't shut down your heart.
I know there is no bright side to look on
but walk on the sunny side of the street when you can
and follow the feathers and coins that I leave
like a path into the future -
I know you don't want to go there but you must.
Keep the collage, it's yours now and my words are yours too:
remember to explore,
keep on keeping on,
you were my inspiration, let me be yours
and most of all,
love.

p.s
Sorry, again, about the mess.