And the grief goes on

I thought I'd finished my blog with a positive post about finding new love. It seemed like a hopeful ending and I've been been trying to wean myself off blogging. I don't want grief to define me. I'm a writer and grief is just one of the things that I can write about. I also want to be a fully rounded human being and loss is just one of the things I have experienced. But I'm also a person who is committed to telling the truth, and the truth is that I have been struggling lately.

I was warned that this might happen. The people further down the road in online support groups told me that the second year of widowhood is routinely found to be worse than the first as the shock wears off and they adjust to the reality of a new normal without their partner. Not for me though, I thought. I am different. After all, I'm not a widow. I don't have grieving children and I don't have a whole life to rebuild. Neither do I have all of the secondary losses that I read about: I haven't lost my income; I'm not having to learn how to be a single parent (I've had that t-shirt for four years and, like me, it's worn out); I haven't lost my identity as a part of a partnership because Paul and I were only just becoming a couple and still lived mostly independent lives. Yet, I have lost a lot and the repercussions are still being felt, like aftershocks, long after the the debris from the original earthquake has been cleared up.

To the outside world, I probably look like I'm doing well. I have a lovely new house, I'm working, I took the kids on a foreign holiday on my own, I no longer walk around crying in public and I occasionally manage to go out and smile at social occasions. I imagine that I've lost the haunted look of the newly devastated and the bags under my eyes have gradually faded. Most importantly, I have a new boyfriend which is surely the ultimate indicator of my success in embracing a new future. I lost one boyfriend and found a new one. Job done, surely?

But, no. In fact, having a new boyfriend, like every forward movement, has unleashed a whole new tirade of grief. I proclaimed my new love to the world like someone who was one step away from winning that slippery game of Snakes and Ladders and promptly landed on a snake which sent me cascading back to the beginning again. It happened a month or so ago on Paul's birthday. I woke up smiling in my new boyfriend's arms, looked at the date on my phone, realised its significance and everything began to fall apart. How could I have woken up happy on such a sad day? And how could I be sad while my new partner was happily basking in the glow of new love? Even worse, how could I have forgotten the significance of the date? (Not so hard for me because I never spent a birthday with Paul). As a friend helpfully said, "it's a headf**k!" I couldn't hold so many conflicting emotions in one body and I slid down that snake into a pit of anxiety that I'm gradually trying to climb out of. I've been waking up with that lurching feeling in my stomach again, walking on a tightrope again, feeling like I might fall at any moment. I am full to the brim with emotions that threaten constantly to spill out and I am vibrating again like I was at the beginning, shaken to my very core, feeling unsafe.

Things got so bad that I went back to see a therapist  She tells me that I am suffering not just from grief but from the repercussions of trauma which has been triggered by the very thing that you'd think might have made me feel better: falling in love. It turns out my whole being is trying to protect me by screaming, "don't do this again! It only ever ends badly." My mind is on red alert, looking for signs of danger in the strangest places - in the tattoos on my boyfriend's arm, in the words that he speaks, the messages that he sends, the love that he gives. My therapist has me recording my anxious thoughts and the other day I'd written down twenty-four of them by 10am. She says I'm like a victim who has been in a fire who now registers every whiff of smoke as a life threatening situation that I need to get out of when, in reality, I have a faulty toaster (my brain) and a bit of overdone toast (a new relationship which, like all new relationships, is a bit scary and not 100% perfect.). When my boyfriend mentioned the idea of one day meeting my children, my anxiety went a level higher. The last time I introduced a partner to my children, he promptly dropped dead. The one before that left and broke all of our hearts. Ok, logically I know it's unlikely to happen again. Maybe it will be third time lucky. But logic has nothing to do with anxiety. My limbic system is out of control and is over-ruling the rational part of my mind. The therapist explains that the amygdala stores my memories and determines my fears based on the strength of my emotional reactions and my amygdala has learned in no uncertain terms that love and the grief that ensues when it ends, is terrifying and not to be messed with. And yet, the part of my brain that can still think really wants to love, and my boyfriend and I are very compatible and he's lovely and is doing his best to understand........

So, I went for some hypnosis and I've seen the herbalist who has increased the anti-anxiety herbs in my medicine. I've been to the GP who has prescribed me pills that I look at every day, wondering if I can manage without or if I should give in. I talk to widows online still and find that, though their circumstances are different, they are still struggling too. Many of them are receiving treatment for anxiety or depression, one, two, three or ten years down the line from the event that changed their lives forever. And, though I don't have all of the secondary losses that they experience, I do notice that I share some of them. No-one talks to me about Paul now. Since his mum died I have lost my main connection with the people who loved him. What do I do with his memory now? And like other widows, my identity has changed. For one thing I've acquired this identity as a person who writes about grief. What do I with that as I try to move forward? Do I keep blogging, write a memoir or just leave it here and move into a new future? Meanwhile, the romantic novel that I was writing when Paul died is still on hold and I'm not sure I can go back to it. Do I start something new? What would that be? I'm a writer and I don't know what to write about. I'm a reader who still can't read a book. I'm a person who still can't watch films or TV. I'm still in transition, out of my comfort zone, trapped between the past and the future, between sadness and happiness. It's not an easy place to be.

And like the other widows, I have lost touch with some real-life friends. I retreated inward when Paul died, needing to be alone to process my grief and spending my time online with the only people who truly understood. Now my Facebook newsfeed is over 50% grief-related and most of my life is lived online. It's been a safe place to be but I know it's not healthy. In the real world I've not been much fun to be around and understandably people assume I should be back to normal by now. The friends who used to call to check on me don't call anymore (I don't blame them as they have busy lives and gave me so much love and support in the early days). I don't have people inviting me to go on holiday with them this year either. Life goes on and I need to stand on my own two feet. I'm no longer a special case. But the grief goes on and, sixteen months in, I am still struggling to keep reaching for the light.

I repeat the words of the hypnotherapist like a mantra: "Love is always stronger than fear," she said. Somewhere, deep down, some part of me believes her. And so I keep going and keep trying to hang on to love.

Desperately seeking young, fit, risk-averse, spiritually-inclined man, with good genes whose entire family were wiped out in a freak accident

Beverley, Writer, 46
Quirky, sincere, creative and obsessed with when you're going to die.

Catchy huh?

So, it's one thing to decide that you are interested in experiencing love again (see the blog more catchily entitled - I would do it again) but finding love is a whole other kettle of fish. You can't just click your fingers and ask all appropriate suitors to form an orderly queue. Especially if you're a self-employed, single parent who spends most evenings trapped in their own home, meeting someone is not easy. Paul was the only appealing single man that I have encountered in real life in the last decade or so and my time is precious; I don't expect to get that lucky again. So, not prepared to wait another decade, I have dusted off my fishing rod and, only eighteen months since I deactivated my dating profiles, I find myself online fishing again.

I started gently, casually, by reactivating Tinder and adjusting my personal statement to reflect my change in circumstances. I made it clear that I was not ready for a relationship but would like some male company. It was a clumsy beginning. The first person who approached me got short shrift when he asked me about my taste in books, films and music. At that time my brain was so shot to pieces that I couldn't remember anything. I hadn't watched a film or read a book for many months and had had the same CD playing on repeat for just as long. I told him to stop asking me so many questions. Luckily he was patient with me and I found myself an online Scrabble buddy (cue the blog in which I weep my way through my first Scrabble game, feeling like I am cheating on Paul who loved to play Scrabble with me). Next I met an ex-vicar who I've been for a couple of drinks with and then a fellow writer who has become like a surrogate online boyfriend. We chat about kids and writing and he offers me online hugs when it all gets too much. Sometimes he indulges my need to have someone to say goodnight to. He's not ready for a relationship either but, along with the others, he has been part of my rehabilitation into the land of the living. It's been good to spend at least some of my online time talking about something other than death and grief.

Then there are the others (oh so many others), the ones who read, 'I might like some male company' as, 'I want sex'. They like to tell me that I must have needs and the many ways in which they would like to meet them. They are fascinated to know how long it is since I last had it. One of them made the mistake of asking around the time of the anniversary and I killed his ardour somewhat by saying that actually, I could remember exactly when it was because it was the last time I saw my love alive. Sometimes these men delete me before I delete them. Sometimes I get there first. It's been a depressing business. There have been a lot of tears.

Recently I had the revelation that perhaps my ambiguous profile wasn't helping matters and that, actually, I now realise that ultimately I want more than a friend, more than a lover. I changed my profile again to reflect this new stage in my journey and said that I would like to experience love again one day but that I am still finding my feet. And things changed a little. I get messages now from people who might at least consider the idea of having a relationship even if they are few and far between. It is noticeable that I get a lot less messages than I did two years ago. Not every man is looking for a middle-aged orphaned single parent who writes a blog about grief and mentions death in her online profile. On the other hand, answering my dating messages used to feel like an overwhelming part-time job. I prefer it this way and at least it sorts the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys. I definitely need a man not a boy, I reflect. Or do I?

I expected that it would be complicated to find someone who could love the new me; I have changed a lot as a result of enduring what I have endured. What I didn't realise until I started dating is that my requirements in a partner have changed too. Emotional intelligence and empathy have become my most important criteria now. Naturally, I need kindness and compassion above all things. But there are other things too, surprising things that I come up against as men message me or as I swipe through profiles.

For instance, it turns out that atheists and sceptics are no longer welcome here. Suddenly I can't countenance the idea of having a relationship with anyone who might try to argue with me about the existence of an afterlife. Where before spirituality was just a mild curiosity of mine, now it is a matter of prime importance.

Then there is the question of age and health. I find myself studying profiles and my first thought is not whether the men in the photos are attractive or interesting but how likely they are to drop dead in the near future. Suddenly I am unforgiving of a few extra pounds, social smoking or excessive drinking. I see an imaginary warning label saying 'heart disease risk' over every man who is a little overweight or pictured holding a pint of beer. I discount anyone who rides a motorbike or who likes extreme sports, preferring men who keep fit by doing yoga. I'm no longer sure about anyone over the age of fifty and find myself considering men who are younger than me rather than older. I can't countenance the idea of dating anyone who is called Paul or anyone who is fifty-three.

Luckily, you don't come across many blacksmiths on dating sites but I came across one man who upcycles industrial equipment and found myself sobbing as I told him about the lamp that Paul was making when he died. He deleted me before I had time to realise the terrible conundrum that, having found and lost my ideal mate, I can't go near anyone who might remind me of him.

Finally I realise that I need someone who has experienced enough tragedy to be able to empathise with my own journey but nothing that would suggest too much risk. A fellow orphan would be appealing, I think, because then I won't have to deal with supporting them through loss in the future (I'm not heartless, just tired of funerals) but I don't want an orphan whose parents died of cancer because that might suggest a genetic connection. And I don't want someone who is so scarred by tragedy that it poses a risk to their mental health. I already know that widowers are the gold standard when dating in the widowed community (even my bereavement counsellor tells me that these relationships have the best chance of success) and so I have found myself adding 'widowed' to my search criteria whilst wondering at the same time if I want to deal with their grief as well as my own, whilst considering if I am secure enough to not find myself asking pitifully if they loved their previous spouse more than me. It is a weird world I have entered when I find myself having these thoughts.

All of which leaves me with my opening statement: 'Desperately seeking a young, fit, risk-averse, spiritually-inclined man, with good genes whose entire family were wiped out in a freak accident'. That's not too much to ask for surely?

The food of love

At Wagamamas on a rare occasion when Paul let me buy him dinner because he was helping me with Christmas shopping after my mum's death

'People always wanted to feed Paul,' says your mum. This information makes me smile because it leads me to conclude that this is how you got by. Even as a grown man, you'd rock up to people's houses unannounced and find yourself eating plates of toast, or cake or staying for dinner. You loved food but you didn't know how to make it, though some of your concoctions were legendary: garlic sandwiches, cider vinegar potions. I don't really even know what you ate most of the time. I know you occasionally cooked fish and roast dinners for your friend but generally I assume you got by on a diet of tinned food. I know that you liked to mix things up, adding spices and garlic to tins of beans and soup and that it didn't always turn out the way you intended. And I know that you loved cheese.

'Do you like cheese?' I once asked you by Messenger.
'I am at least 40% cheese,' you replied. 'And must have it at every opportunity.'
You made me laugh.

At the beginning of our relationship, things proceeded in the manner to which you were evidently accustomed. I'd bake flapjack in anticipation of your arrival and you'd arrive hungry and eat your way through a plate of it with obvious gusto. If it was evening, I'd cook you sweet potato curry. You didn't like going out to eat. It wasn't really your style and you didn't like spending money. And nor did you like me to pay for you but, on the other hand, I really didn't like having to cook on my days off childcare. As a feminist it irked me to always be the one doing the cooking. It was another conundrum. 'I'm not cooking for you every time you come round,' I said. So, you started picking up a meal for one in the supermarket with mock seriousness, even though I protested that I didn't really mean that I would never cook for you; you took feedback on board and you were not going to have me resenting you.

One day, in January, you decided to show me that you could be the new man you felt I needed you to be. You determined to cook me dinner. You arrived, Ainsley Harriot cookbook in hand, with a bag of shopping and set about chopping in my kitchen while I went to a doctor's appointment. I returned to the smell of burning and you, dripping with sweat and visibly shaken in a way I'd never seen you, pans all over the kitchen and a pile of orange slop deposited onto two plates. It tasted ok, I said, just slightly singed. I said it added to the depth of the flavour. It took you a full hour to calm down. It took another hour to clean the kitchen. You never cooked for me again. But I loved you all the more for trying.

How do you survive that?

A year ago my beloved partner, Blacksmith Paul, died. We'd only been together for eight months, although we'd known each other when we were younger and not realised the depth of the connection that we shared. It is a tragic story of chances missed, bad timing and true love. I was a single parent, recently orphaned, who had not been lucky in love. I'd known a few things that I thought were love before but nothing like this. This was the real deal. Too scared to risk things going wrong after the last boyfriend debacle, I'd been reluctant to introduce him to my children but, on the sixth of March 2016, I did. I can still see him standing in my front garden that night writing messages to Hephaestus the blacksmith god with them, releasing paper lanterns into the sky. They loved him. I loved him. He loved me. And that was the last time I saw him. Five days later, he was dead. No-one really knows why. It seems his heart just stopped beating. He went out of touch and I went out of my mind with worry. On the thirteenth, two of his friends and I broke into the tiny shack where he lived alone in the Peak District and found his already decomposing body on the bed. My world imploded and I experienced the kind of relentless pain that I didn't know existed. I didn't think I could survive it. But I did. Like lots of other people who have been through impossible heartbreak, I continue to survive.

It seemed appropriate just before the anniversary to spend last weekend at the AGM and birthday celebrations of the organisation Widowed and Young. The organisation has been a lifeline to me over the past year even though I'm not really a widow, even though I'm not really that young, even though I've not been sure that I really belong. It was only a short relationship after all and we weren't even married; I've not been sure that I can compare my loss to the loss of people who have been married for years, some of them with children. But the members of WAY have always welcomed me and, over the past year, I have spent most evenings in an online room with the only people who truly understood how it feels to have your future ripped apart. It felt right to make it to the AGM, to meet some of those people in person, at this time. The title of John Irving's novel, 'A Widow for One Year' keeps going round my head. When I read it, I never thought that it would be me.

It is strange the solidarity and comfort that can be found from being in a room full of people who have known great tragedy. As I stood in the hall of the hotel in Stratford last Saturday night, I looked around me and was overwhelmed by the thought that every one of the people in the room had lost a partner, that all of those people had had their worlds blown to pieces. The love, and the lost love, in the room was palpable. Still, it wasn't a sad occasion, on the whole. There was fun and laughter and by the end of the evening everyone was on the dance floor. It turns out that the widowed have lost more than their spouses - their inhibitions have gone too. For them, the worst has already happened. In some ways, they have been liberated from fear and they know how to live, how to love. They are a truly fabulous bunch. It was a fabulous weekend.

Even so, gradually, inevitably the stories came out. I found a girl (really, just a girl) crying in the toilets and offered her a hug. My heart broke for her. How could someone so young survive something like this? Then I spoke to a man who had lost his wife just after his baby girl had been born. She'd developed ovarian cancer while she was pregnant. 'That's so sad,' I said feebly and he nodded wearily. He had told this story before. And then there was my online friend, who had given birth to her only chid the week after her partner had been killed in a bike accident. She was choosing funeral flowers when she should have been choosing baby clothes. 'How do you survive something like that?' I found myself thinking, kicking myself at the same time because I already know the answer. You survive because you have to. Because, unless you kill yourself (and most people who have been widowed will have considered it), you have no other option.

As I sit here, a year on, I find myself reflecting, not just on my enormous loss and sadness but at the resilience of the human spirit. Sure, my grief is still deep and I still cry a lot. I still wish that I could rewind time and bring Paul back. I wish I could undo this long year of pain. And I know that grief will not be tied up neatly at the end of this year but will go on for as long as love goes on (forever). But I can also see how far I have come. I have moved house and started new ventures. I have let go of the work that was weighing me down and now only do work that I love. I have written more than ever before and made new friends. I am even, very tentatively, dating again. And I experience joy, like sunshine between clouds of sadness, on a regular basis. Slowly I am building a new life for myself. What's more, I can tell you how I did it. And this is how.

I wrote. Sometimes, I wrote all night long, often with tears streaming until the words on the screen blurred in front of my eyes. I just had to tell the world my story, even if they thought I was mad, even if I felt mad myself. I needed to get it out. When you're in love and your partner dies, you just want to talk about it and my laptop listened when friends were asleep. The very act of writing calmed my mind. Sometimes, just trying to find the perfect metaphor for turmoil gave my brain something to do and when I had finished, I felt sated. It was like literary self-harm, releasing the pressure from my heart and mind. And in sharing my words, I found support from compassionate friends and from other bereaved people. I also found meaning, as I realised that my words were helping other people. Writing gave me a purpose and, when your world has fallen apart, a purpose is what you need.

I learned to slow down and I learned to say no. I rarely went to social occasions (it all seemed so trivial and alienating) and I removed from my life anything or anyone that didn't make me feel good. I let go of the pressure to meet other people's expectations and focused on myself. I filled my life with the things that made me feel better: not fixed, but less bad. I went outside as often as possible and looked at the world from high hills with big skies. I walked crying through woods and parks, not caring who saw. I swam, feeling the support of water, absorbed in the rhythm of the strokes. I learned, finally, to meditate, practising mindfulness on a daily basis, staying in the moment, learning to name my emotions, to focus on the feeling of the ground beneath my feet. In deep grief, the moment is the only place to be; thinking about the future all too often gives rise to panic. So I stayed in the moment, even when that moment was pure agony. I gave in to pain and sobbed so hard that I thought I was going to die. Like the writing, it brought release, it brought peace.

I exercised. Gently at first, more vigorously now. My bereavement counsellor tells me that in shock, we are in fight or flight mode all of the time. Exercise seduces my body into thinking it has fought and afterwards, it can relax. I tried to remember to eat. I tried to remember to drink water. I tried to remember to sleep. Finally I understood what people meant when they talked about the need to look after myself, about self-compassion. I asked myself what I needed and I tried to give it, to myself. In the absence of anyone else (and often there was no-one else), I had to care about number one.

Still, I reached out to people and I learned to ask for help. I had regular bereavement counselling, saw a herbalist, paid for help at at home (luckily, I was able to afford to do it). I said to my friends, 'I can't do this!' Some of them stepped up to support me. Some of them backed away and left me floundering. When I moved house, I told Facebook that I couldn't manage and a whole hoard of people came to help, some of whom I barely knew, some of whom I hadn't seen for years. I will never forget the kindness of the people who came forward. (I am trying to forgive or let go of the people who let me down. Not everyone is able to be close to a disaster zone.)

I learned to stop caring about what other people think. I let go of my own idea of how I should be. When I'm on my own death bed is it going to matter than someone I don't even like that much thinks I'm self-absorbed, or that someone I barely know thinks I'm too vociferous in my grief? Does it really matter if my children go to bed an hour later, or watch a bit too much TV, so long as they know that they are loved? Does it really matter if I am ten minutes late and don't send thank you notes? As Dr Seuss says, 'those who matter, don't mind and those who mind, don't matter'. I learned to value myself as my partner valued me. My resources are precious, my energy is precious, my time is precious. I am careful now where I invest it.

And this year, I have invested a lot of it not just in surviving my grief but in supporting other people who are in agony. Every day, for the last year, I have talked to the people on the Widowed and Young Facebook group (and to the writers from Refuge in Grief) and, regardless of the differences in our circumstances, I have felt myself to be at home in those places. There is solace to be found in the communities of the heartbroken. There is no silver lining to the cloud of my grief and yet, I am grateful for the wisdom that comes from experience and for the companionship of the people I have met. I am grateful for the knowledge that I am not alone, that other people have been here too and they have survived. We know what it is to love and we have known great loss. We have stared death in the face and we will make the most of the time we have left. We know how precious life is. We know what love is. We are warriors and we will survive.

A version of this blog also appeared in The Huffington Post 
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/beverley-ward/how-do-you-survive_1_b_15265562.html?1489079553

This won't be a Happy Christmas

I'm not sending Christmas cards this year. Call me Scrooge, but I just don't feel like celebrating. I don't begrudge other people their happy Christmas (or maybe I do) but I don't want to think about it and I don't want to talk about it and I just want it to be over as soon as possible. I don't have any festive cheer to spare. It took all my energy to put up a Christmas tree for the children. I've booked the panto and the Christmas train and some time between now and the twenty-fifth, I will buy the children some presents. But that's it. That's enough. I have turned off the radio and I'm staying away from the parties. I don't need to be constantly reminded that Christmas is a time for sharing love and that half of the people I love most in the world are missing. Frankly, Mariah Carey has it covered: All I want for Christmas is you. And Santa can't bring me what I want. So it's 'Bah Humbug' from me, I'm afraid.

I suppose I could do what other people seem to be doing and donate to a charity instead of sending cards, but I donate to charities all year long. Charity is for life, not just for Christmas, surely? I'm already saving a few trees. Isn't that enough? Why do I need to offset my sadness? Can't I just be selfish this year? Sometimes sadness is appropriate. We can't all make lemonade every time we get lemons. It's exhausting squeezing every drop of positivity from a negative situation when you're already exhausted.

Don't worry, it goes both ways. I don't want any Christmas cards either. I mean, I don't mind if you have to follow the custom, if writing cards gives you some joy, if it just wouldn't be Christmas for you if you didn't send cards. But please don't send one on my account. Please don't think that sending me a snowy scene with the words: 'Happy Christmas' and 'Happy New Year' is going to improve my lot during this festive period. Putting it bluntly, it's not.

I appreciate you thinking about me but love is for all of the year, not just for Christmas too. The friends who care about me have been here for me during what has been the worst year of my life. Some of them have sent me love on a daily or weekly basis. They have checked in on how I am regularly. Some of them have driven across the country to see me. A lot of good friends have read my blog, religiously or sporadically. They know how I am. They have sat me with while I've cried week after week after week. They know that I will not be happy just because it's Christmas. The word happy is just jarring. It's not appropriate for someone who is grieving.

This Christmas won't be a happy one. I'm not being negative. It's just the way it is. Sure, it will have some happy moments. I have two gorgeous children who are excited and there will be joy in seeing them open their presents and all that malarkey. And, yes, I'm grateful that I have them and that I'm not homeless and that I don't live in Syria. I have a lot of things to be grateful for. I can make lemonade when I need to. But I will mostly be sad and mostly thinking about the people who are missing. That's just the way it is. My life is half-empty, not half-full.

By all means think of me. And if you want to send me a card, send me a card acknowledging that you know this year will be hard. Wish me some peace. Send me some strength. Keep sending me love. Make plans to hang out with me, knowing that there will probably be tears if you do. But don't wish me a Happy Christmas. Christmas will be tough. As for 2017, with any luck it can't be as bad as 2016 but I hear bereaved people and counsellors routinely saying that the second year following the loss of a partner is worse than the first so I'm not counting my chickens and the last time I said things couldn't get worse, you died. I'm not risking saying it again. Probably the second year following the death of a partner is worse, at least in part because friends forget that things don't get better just because the year on the calendar has changed. When the person you love is missing, they just keep being missing. So please, friends, forgive me for the lack of cards and for the Grinchlike behaviour and keep sending the love.

You didn't send me a card last year. You sent me a New Year's card instead. It was a beautiful scene of bluebells and trees. You acknowledged that life had been tough for me for years and that things could only get better. You were a big part of my future plans for life improvement.  

'May all your dreams come true in 2016,' you wrote. 

So much for that. 

Bah Humbug. 

Once upon a time the man I loved died

When I started my blog, I didn't set out to tell a story. I was simply in agony and writing was my way of trying to survive. I wasn't writing for an audience, I was writing for myself. But gradually my blog has turned into a story with an audience: the story of my grief's journey and also the story of a beautiful love affair that ended, like your life, way too soon. I hardly have any photos of you, so my blog is the equivalent for me - a photo album in words, a way to remember every precious moment that we shared. Because our relationship was short and restricted by the fact that I wouldn't introduce you to my children, when you died I was able to make a list of each day we spent together and what we did. I know I will keep writing until I have recorded them all. There are only a few left. And now, for some reason, at my hundredth post, I find myself wanting to put a structure to the story, wanting to write it from the beginning but I'm not sure where the beginning is.

It is always a tricky decision, knowing where to begin a story and this one is no different. I could start it back in the nineties when we first met, when Cupid made a blunder and fired his arrows in the wrong direction. Or I could go further back to when I met your future best friend. Ed, at playgroup while we were still in nappies. I could talk about my divorce and my terrible relationship with the children's father or the break up of my last relationship, to give context to the precious nature of this love story. Or I could rewind time just a short way and start last year when our paths crossed again, back to that good time when Cupid had his act together and everything was aligned, until suddenly it wasn't.

Still, I've been to enough creative writing classes to know that, these days, a story should throw us into the centre of the action and start with a bang. So, if I were going to start this story properly, I would start it with a body, the body of the man I loved -  your dead body. Without that appalling scene, this blog wouldn't exist.

And so it transpires that, at what is the true beginning of this story, I am standing in my pyjamas and dressing gown on your doorstep, staring at the dead body that is laid out on your bed. It might seem surprising to some that I can almost see your bed from the doorstep, but those people don't know yet that you are a surprising hero who lives in a tiny shack in the Peak District. Also a little odd that I am out here in my pyjamas with two male friends of yours that I don't know. They've just bashed the door of this shack in with a fire extinguisher as if we are in some kind of crime drama and a voice is saying the words, 'there's Paul'. Before they've had time to stop me, I am pushing past them into the darkness of the room where you sleep and there is a breath in time where I think you might actually be asleep now and I feel guilty for dragging your friends out here in the dark. But as soon as I am near enough to see your body properly, I know that you are dead. Either that or you have been abducted and someone has left another deformed body on your bed. Part of me wants to run to you and hold you but a larger part recoils in horror and I stay in the doorway, wanting to leave but unable to move. I stay just long enough to take a picture in my mind, a picture that I will never be able to erase. Your head is black and purple in hue and swollen so that your features are distorted. You look like the elephant man, completely unrecognisable aside from your clothes, clothes from which you are bursting, your body inflated and leaking. Your hands are clenched, there is blood on the bed and the stench makes me want to retch. One thing I know for sure. This is a body but it is not you. You are gone.

Your friend calls an ambulance. Someone on the end of the line asks routine questions, trying to ascertain whether there is any hope of resuscitation. We all know there is not but they force him to touch your skin and check for signs of life even though he is saying repeatedly, 'he is definitely dead.' And I just stand there listening to the word: dead. How can you be dead?

Afterwards, I stand on the porch shaking until someone ushers me into a car and I sit, still shuddering and stare into space. I don't know how long I am there. At some point I see blue flashing lights moving up the long drive to the shack where you live, the shack where you are dead and some time after that a policeman slides into the driver's seat of the car and asks me questions that make me feel like a terrible girlfriend. You have been out of touch for three days and judging by the state you are in, you have been dead for all of them. I wonder with him how it can have taken me three days to raise the alarm. Was it just yesterday that I was out on a day trip with a friend? What was I thinking going out for the day when you were lying dead on your bed? If this is a crime drama then I assume that I am a suspect. I'm not yet sure how you died and maybe circumstances are suspicious. So I try to justify myself, explaining to the policeman that you don't always answer your phone, that we don't live together, that we don't see each other every day because of my children. I tell them that I have been sending messages and calling for days but that you haven't answered. I don't tell them that I have been worrying that you were about to dump me but I tell them that I came out last night and that your lights were on but your door was locked. I tell them about the notes I left on the door and on your van.  I don't tell them that I was frightened and crying, banging on your door and shouting your name, pleading with you to let me in.

They ask me what your mum's name is and I feel even worse. I don't know. I can tell them roughly where she lives because you once drove me past her house but I haven't met your mum yet. We've only been seeing each other for eight months and we just haven't found the time. I can tell them the first name of your sister but that is all I know. I don't know where she lives. I could tell them so many things about you if they asked: your favourite songs, what kind of tree you would choose to be if you were reincarnated as a tree, how you have changed my life, but I can't tell them anything they want to know.

The policeman takes my number and eventually says that I am free to go. I wait for your friends and find myself browsing Facebook as if it is just a normal evening except for the fact that I am sitting in a stranger's car in my pyjamas at one in the morning. I see that a friend is up and I message her to tell her that you are dead. How can you be dead? She phones and I try to explain through my tears and I say, 'can you come?' She says that she will catch a train in the morning to be there.

Your friends drop me back at home and I stand in the kitchen wondering what to do now that you are dead. I go upstairs and climb into bed with my daughter because I need to be next to someone whose heart is beating. I hold her hand and lie awake for hours. I think about the last time that I saw her, standing at the top of the stairs as I told her that I needed to go out to look for a missing friend, that I was leaving her with a stranger, that I would be back soon. I am wondering how I will tell her in the morning that I found you but that you were dead. It is only three months since I told her that Grandma was dead. It is only a week since she met you for the first time and gave me her approval. It is too much. I am wondering how on earth I am going to get up and get the children to school. I am thinking about you and every snapshot of our beautiful time together, time that is now over, snapshots that I will record later. I am wondering where your body has gone and thinking that I never even turned back to say goodbye. I am wondering if they have found your mum or your sister and what happens next. But mostly I am just lying there thinking that you are dead. How can you be dead?

I am wondering how it can all be over now. This is not the way the story should end. It is not the way the story should begin. But it is the way it happened.

Counting

These days I find myself counting,
I am always counting.
I count breaths, days, months,
log the seasons as they go by:
spring, summer, autumn.
Only winter lies ahead.

I don't know why I count,
don't really know what I am counting.
Life is upside down and back to front
and I'm not sure anymore
if I am counting up
or counting down,
if I am counting towards something
or away.

But I count the days,
tick them off on the calendar
labelled 'After';
you ended as it began.

I don't want to count:
every day takes me further
from a day spent with you
and a day closer to

But I count anyway,
watching time pass by,
amazed by the number of
days survived,
amazed still that you died,
amazed I am still alive.

This time last year - falling in love as the leaves changed 

at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park