I regularly read this forum, and occasionally post to it. My own position (you can read my profile here for more detail on that) is that I lost my wife two and a half years ago - when she was only 61 - and am now facing the future completely alone, with my hopes and dreams destroyed. It's shit, and I would give anything to change it - but I know that that's the way it is, and that I have to try to cope with it. All of us here are in similar positions, I know.
Since my wife died, I have read a great deal about death, grief, and the ways in which other people have dealt with those things. One thing I know for sure is that there no easy answers. But, still, I seek inspiration where I can.
In that context, I wanted to share a couple of things which I have come across over the past few months.
1. There was a beautiful and moving piece published in The Guardian a few months ago about animal 'apparitions' that have significance after the death of someone we love. And it lead to a moving exchange in the letters pages.
The original piece is at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/27/country-diary-in-my-moment-of-loss-birds-came-like-gifts
And the following letters exchanges are here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/30/creature-comforts-in-times-of-grief
I myself don't believe in any religion; nor do I have any belief in an afterlife: once we are dead, we are dead - and only memories (and love!) remain. But still - one can dream.
In my own case, my wife was a very keen gardener, and she also loved wildlife. Whenever she was gardening, a robin would always follow her around - and, whenever that happened, she would stop her work and whistle Elvis's 'Love Me Tender' to the bird. Nowadays, gardening to me is just a burdensome chore - but I try to maintain order in the garden, precisely because the garden meant a lot to my wife. And, whenever I am doing so, a robin always eventually turns up to follow me around. Whenever that happens, I stop, pay the bird some attention, and tell myself that it is my wife, in avian form. Of course I know that, really, it's just a bird. But I can dream, can't I?
2. The English writer and poet Michael Rosen lost his son - aged only 18 - suddenly and unexpectedly, from meningitis. I don't have kids - and losing a partner is a different thing from losing a child - so I am not trying to draw any equivalences. But I can suggest that both events are impossibly difficult burdens to cope with.
Mr Rosen has written about his loss, and a couple of things he wrote recently made an impact on me.
The first, from the piece at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/20/michael-rosen-at-80-grief-self-belief-chocolate-cake, is as follows:
"My new book, Where Are You Eddie? is expressing how I feel about Eddie now, which is that Eddie lives on with all the people who knew him. Just recently, a woman has opened a secondhand bookshop in Muswell Hill. She wrote to me and said she was with Eddie in the sixth form. And she sent me a picture of them in a play together. When people die, they live in the memories and imaginations of other people. It’s very easy and trite to say that, but that’s how I feel now."
And the second, from an older piece at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/29/getting-better-michael-rosen-on-coping-with-the-death-of-his-teenage-son, contains this recollection:
"Soon after Eddie’s death, Rosen and Eddie's mother, his first wife, travelled to Paris to get away. Walking through a cemetery one day, they encountered a woman crying at the foot of her young son’s grave and struck up a conversation. 'It was an incredible moment,' Rosen says. 'On the one hand, I felt terrible for her. On the other I was thinking, I don't think I can live like that, I must find ways to be less incapacitated. I actually had those feelings. Most people who are grieving, they quite often have those thoughts - that they must find a way to carry on. It's whether you succeed in doing it. It’s an effort. It's quite a thing to do.'"
These thoughts and suggestions are in some ways completely trite. But, in other ways, I think they are quite profound. Whether they help any of us is a different question. Nevertheless, I offer them up.
I send everybody here my love and best wishes.
