I know that really it is tomorrow and not today that is a year since you left, but it was a Monday, so for me it was today. I am just back from going to see you, but you know that because the sun came out when I was there, and you are my sun.
‘So how has this year been then Judes’ - you ask. Well darling, more tears than laughter, more sadness than joy, more loneliness than I could have imagined. But then we knew that would be the case. Although I am learning to understand that if I had not had you in my life and loved you for all those years, I wouldn’t have experienced all the good stuff to even be able compare to how it is now.
So darling, today, for every desperate memory that hurt I have matched it with one that is wonderful.
To combat that awful day when we heard the word cancer, I will remember the word Cream – and you surprising me and our boy by flying us to London and then to the Albert Hall on that beautiful sunny May Day evening to sing along to Sunshine of Your Love – you never did confess how much those tickets on Ebay were.
The memory of those interminably long scary hours that you were in surgery I will match with the one of you at midnight in HDU, more tubes and cables than I could count, looking dreadful and grey. But when I whispered ‘I love you’ your wit and fighting spirit showed when you quietly replied ‘So you should’.
For those hateful hours spent waiting in hospitals I will also think of sitting in the sun in a square in Florence eating pizza because neither of us wanted to queue to get into the Uffizi gallery, so we bought a postcard of David instead.
For when you heartbreakingly, bravely explained to our boy that you weren’t going to pull through this one and then holding him while he cried, I will remember the two of you dancing on the restaurant table at your 50th birthday party, and that spectacular dismount.
For when you said in a quiet and tired voice ‘Thank you for everything Judes’ just minutes before you died, I will remember the first time you asked me to dance at Jackie’s wedding, and how we didn’t leave the dance floor, or each other’s arms, for the rest of the night. And you have not left my heart since that first meeting.
So it’s not you, but me, that should be saying thank you, because for every sad memory I have, you have given me a hundred amazing ones.
