Yesterday would have been…..indeed it WAS our 19th wedding anniversary, although we’d been together a lot longer than that. My husband died at the end of April, then I faced his birthday at the beginning of June (a dreadful day where I cried all day but I’d decided to be on my own) and my birthday in July. Both were not good days. So, I thought about yesterday and what I would do, how I would feel, how I would be. So! I decided to celebrate our anniversary with close friends who knew him. We went out for lunch, I drove. It was lovely, we talked about him but not all the time. We smiled and laughed about all our lives and raised a toast to him. I was on the ‘hard stuff’ Diet Coke!
we came home, had a cuppa and as my friends left, another old friend rocked up with champagne in hand and her pyjamas in the other! We were up talking until after 2 this morning!
did I miss my wonderful husband? You bet I did! Did I feel the pain of his loss? Yes! But the difference was that I felt like I’d celebrated our anniversary and our fabulous years together and not tortured myself with the ‘this time 19 years ago we were…or this time last year he was still alive and we did….’ So, it worked for me. It got me through, my friends got me through and my day passed happily which he would have wanted.
He has been dead 16 weeks this week, a lifetime ago and yet five minutes ago. Some days it’s hard to decipher. The loss, the pain is omnipresent. I know I will have many more days to come when I cry all day for him, for what we had, for what I’ve lost. But yesterday, another important milestone in my life has passed with smiles, stories and I felt him all around me. I hope this might help even one of you who have lost the love of your life, as it helped me. It took away the fear and dread of being without him because I found the strength to get through somehow. I hope you do too.x
