As well as missing Gary in everything I do - suddenly something goes through your mind that starts the tears that are never far away. A fleeting thought that grows into something so much bigger and breaks a bit more of your heart. Last night when writing in my journal I realised I would never hear his nickname for me ever again . He never called me by my real name - it was always his special name for me. He wrote it in cards, on notes or called it out if he wanted me for something. No one else has ever called me that - nor will they - it was his name for me and it makes me so terribly sad that I have lost that too as well as him. That part of me has gone forever.
I was so used to worrying about him - just because I loved him so - that I still wake up and worry - before realising that this time the really hot weather doesn’t matter. And as others have mentioned you pass something in a shop - like walking through the menswear department in M&S - and think just for a moment shall I buy him something nice? It is times like these that the pain that is always there becomes even more acute. And you hurry back to the car and just sob. Or you pass the boats on the river and it occurs to you that the trip you kept meaning to do and never got round to is never going to happen now. Forty years of loving someone - it is so hard to accept what has happened,
I think one of the worst times for me is in the car - car journeys on your own are very lonely. I recently went back to work and the hardest thing is the journey there and back and of course coming home to an empty house. And the talking. He was a real chatter - we used to talk about anything and everything and even after so many years we still had so much to talk about. So this silence is just awful. I still talk to him- but there is no answer back.
I have made a promise that I will try to do something different every week - I cannot do the same things so I must try to do other things. They may not be grand gestures - but it is the start of a slow process to put a new life together which I hope I will find some meaning in. It is not about my wonderful children who remain supportive and caring - it is about me finding enough to do to stop them worrying about me and giving them the freedom to live their lives. It is me thinking that my mother’s generation that lost so many husbands and lovers in the war had to be so brave and just carry on - despite suffering hardship and bringing up children on their own. And of course the mothers that lost their sons. Is my grief worse than theirs - no of course not. Our grief is individual to us - we cannot say how we compare to others. However I think the deeper we love then the scar that is left behind is perhaps the hardest to heal. And even when others cannot see or remember the scar, we know it is just not visible any more - it is still and will always be there.
It is not quite three months since I lost Gary - it is still raw and some days, like today, I still cannot really believe it. So please forgive me my outpouring yet again. These things I can only share with the people here - I would not share them with others face to face so I use this forum and writing on it to confess how I am feeling. Thank you.
Please all take care of yourselves.
Trisha xx