A scream.

I’m writing this on a phone so please forgive any typos and the inevitable brevity. This entry feels a bit like a scream I’ve been holding in for weeks and if I don’t get it out on paper it’s going to boil over into some kind of ugliness. So. Phone composition it is. Needs must.

What I’m struggling with is that life will never be as good again. How can it be? Mike was my soulmate in every sense. Everyone I speak to reminds me of that. That our love was something special. That many people never get to experience a love like it. That it was obvious from first meeting us that we were made for each other. I’ll never get that again. How could I? The chances of meeting Mike were so infinitesimal. The chances of meeting another person who sets my whole world alight, who completes and complements me in every way, who understands me and loves me wholly and fully and also happens to be the funniest, sweetest, silliest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met are essentially zero. They have to be. Nobody gets that lucky twice.

And then even if I did, even if by some miracle someone else came along who fulfilled me in that way and made me feel as loved as he did, they won’t be Lyla’s Daddy. They won’t love her in the way Mike did. They won’t have the shared memories of her infanthood, they won’t know how she liked to be sung to, how she used to do a little sigh in her sleep that sounded like a text alert tone, how we had to bounce her on a yoga ball to get her to sleep. They won’t be half of her. And on this fucking day, Father’s Day, that all seems more important than ever.

What I’m realising that is breaking my heart is that there’s no rule in life that things keep getting better. I think I always believed there was, and that they would. And they had – obviously we had been through tough times but ultimately the trend was upwards. Having Mike by my side was the security that life would keep getting better.

And now he’s not.

It feels impossible to go on with that knowledge, to know that I’ve hit the highest high and things can’t ever be that good again. That I’m almost certainly never going to find that kind of soul-deep connection, that intense love, that absolute wide-eyed adoration ever again. That my beautiful child will always be without her Daddy. It feels so pointless even trying, although I know I will, for Lyla. But it’s getting harder and harder. As the shock wears off and the hope gets extinguished, life gets duller and more painful. Every night now I go to bed with a headache from repressing tears all day, holding in this scream that is always threatening. Every night I have flashbacks to finding him, to screaming his name, to CPR and all the absolute horror that followed. Every day is bookended by that waking nightmare. And then I have to just get up and carry on and smile and interact with people and all the time I’m just internally screaming…

I just want to yell at everyone, shake them and ask how they can possibly be going on as normal when Mike, my Mike, my wonderful Mike is no longer in the world. I don’t want to be like that, full up with negativity and anger but I am. I worry that one day it’s all going to come spewing out, this toxic sludge of all the horrors I’m holding in, the flashbacks and the anger and the fear. And I have no idea what that will look like but I know it won’t be good.

Even now I want to minimise this, to say “it’s okay, I’ll feel better tomorrow, I just need some sleep”. But it’s not okay. I’m not okay. I’m drowning. And there’s nothing anyone can do because nobody can bring Mike back. Nobody can tell me – honestly and truthfully – that things will be okay, that I’ll be happy like that again, that Lyla will be okay. Nobody can hold this pain for me or stop the flashbacks or cure these fucking headaches. I have to just go on with it all. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair. He was the best thing in my life. The best thing in Lyla’s life. The best thing in the world. And now he’s gone and everything is worse and always will be.

How the fuck do I live with that?

In the weeds.

I’ve been having a tough time of it lately. A lot of widowed people talk about 6-12 months as being particularly tough, as the protective numbness from the shock is starting to wear off and the realisation that this is it – forever – starts to kick in. Plus the mental and physical exhaustion from being so unhappy for so long is a real challenge.

On top of that, the lifting of lockdown restrictions means that I’m being confronted by new “firsts” on a daily basis – first dinner invite without him, first day commuting, first visit to my family, first time in London again, first family lunch out – etc etc etc. And Lyla is getting ready for preschool and potty training and making the transition from cot bed to “big girl bed” – all things he should be here for.

Add to that the endless news cycle discussions of the footballer who suffered a cardiac arrest (and all the ill-informed nonsense about CPR and defibrillators that goes with it) and I’m feeling extremely vulnerable, sad, lost and alone.

It’s tough.

Tough is a bit of an understatement, really. It’s taking most of my energy to keep myself going and functioning when really all I want to do is crawl into bed and howl until something changes. I don’t know what, exactly, but something. And it’s hard because to the outside world, things should be a bit “better” by now. I’m almost 8 months in, I’m back at work, I’m socialising etc. But actually things are no better. In fact, in many ways they’re worse.

And I’m finding it harder than ever to keep plastering on a smile and being positive and determined and trying my best. I feel angry – angry that this is my life now, angry that Lyla and I have to go through it alone, angry that anyone is expecting anything of me when my world has completely fallen apart and I have no idea how to put it together again. And that’s on me, not on them – nobody is being unreasonable – but I’m struggling so much with the expectations of the world.

And just so, so tired of being sad. So tired of missing him. So tired of walking around with all the joy sucked out of my life, like this big deflated balloon. I arrange nice things – things for Lyla, things for me, even – but they come and they don’t help; in fact they often make things even harder because his absence is louder than ever. I’m full to the brim with missing him and longing for him and there’s less and less room for anything else, especially patience. I find myself digging my nails into my palms to keep from screaming, sometimes. Because life is going on around me but mine feels like it’s over forever.

That’s what I’m finding the hardest to adjust to. That this is it forever. And yes, the pain will dull a little, and I’ll get better at carrying it. But regardless, it’s here forever. My soulmate, the father of my daughter, the most wonderful man I ever met, the thing I was meant to do, will never come back and there’s nothing I can do to make that any better. Life now is about finding joy where I can, raising my daughter, and trying to learn to live with a massive hole right through the centre of me.

I sometimes wish there was a physical manifestation of grief. My best friend – who lost her beloved dad 6 months ago – and I were talking about this yesterday, how we wished it was still customary to show that you’re in mourning through your clothes. Because I feel like the world has moved on somehow and I’m still stuck here in this… bog of grief, wading through the mud, calling out for help through the dank air.

Only the help I’m calling for can’t come. Because the person I’m calling to isn’t here any more.

I feel exhausted by it, exhausted from thinking about it, exhausted from holding in the screaming, exhausted from trying to make everything neat and nice and organised, exhausted from living a life that holds so little contentment, no matter how hard I try. Joy I can find – joy in my daughter, in my friends, in books and art and nature. But contentment eludes me completely. Contentment is his hand in mine, his arm around me, his breathing slow and steady next to me in bed. And that’s lost to me forever.

This is disjointed and messy and has no conclusion, no neat point to come to, nowhere I can draw a line under it and move on. And in that way it’s like grief. It just… goes on.

And it sucks.

The side effects of grief.

Until I lost Mike I don’t think I quite realised what an all-encompassing physical and mental experience grief is. People talk about being “hit by grief” and that’s such a good analogy because it’s exactly how it feels – like you’ve punched in the gut, kicked and beaten until the wind is knocked out of you and you’re left bruised and battered, immobilised. Certainly in the immediate aftermath, I found my whole body ached – it was hard to move, I was often in physical pain, I was oversensitive to touch.

But there’s longer-lasting physical and mental effects too. And that’s what I wasn’t expecting. I anticipated the emotional aftermath – the sadness, the triggers, the anxiety, the anguish, the depression – but I had no idea that I would be so impacted in other ways, too.

Here are some of the impacts that I’ve noticed.

My hair and skin have gone haywire. As someone who has spent her entire adult life with untameable curly hair it has been pretty shocking to find that my hair has just… stopped being curly. Now I have to try and tempt a curl into it, with curl activators and mousses and leave in conditioners. And my skin – generally clear and smooth – has become incredibly blemish-prone, rough-textured, dull and somehow both dry and oily at the same time. I feel I’ve aged ten years in six months.

I have zero memory. Mike would be laughing at this one as my memory was already notoriously bad (I once forgot an entire holiday we had been on and it took 20 minutes and Mike reminding me of a very traumatic rollercoaster experience for me to remember it) but since he died it has got even worse. I have to write everything down or I forget it. And often I then forget to look at the things I’ve written down. I hate this because it’s making work even harder, and resulting in me being a flaky friend which makes me feel really shit.

I’m so, SO tired. I don’t mean, like, can’t-be-bothered or fancy-a-lie-in tired. I mean the kind of tired where I need a nap most days, where if I don’t get into bed and fall asleep for a couple of hours I can’t function, where my brain goes fuzzy and I can’t think about anything other than getting some sleep.

But I can’t fall asleep. I’m regularly awake until 2, 3am. It is horrendous.

I’m more sensitive to temperature. I’ve always loved sleeping in a cold room with the thinnest duvet possible. But now I find myself turning on my portable radiator and adding extra blankets because I’m shivering even in double-digits.

I get migraines. I’ve never really had migraines before, besides a couple when I was pregnant and a few after that. But now I’d say I get on average one a week,. Thankfully they’re usually overnight so I just wake up feeling groggy with a headache, but they’re horrible nonetheless.

I get faint spells. I’ve very rarely felt faint in my life, but since Mike died I’ve had quite a few occasions where I’ve had to sit down with my head between my knees and two instances where I absolutely was convinced I was about to faint and had to call for Jonny and Heather. One of them I ended up on the floor and I absolutely could not get up, and the second everything went black and my ears rang for ages afterwards. It was horrible.

I would love to hear about your own experiences with the “side effects” of grief – the one thing I’ve learned is that you’re never alone in grief and someone else has always experienced the same thing. It is a weird dichotomy of a thing, grief – both incredibly lonely but also comfortingly unifying.

And really fucking bad for the complexion.

Letter to Mike – April 2021 – six months on.

My darling Mikey,

Six months. That’s how long it’s been since we lost you. An arbitrary measure of time, but it feels significant. Half a year. It felt like I should mark it, somehow, but I sat down to write and the words wouldn’t come out. But I knew they would if I wrote to you instead. They always do.

It’s been a long six months. A hard fought battle. I have changed so much. Sometimes I wonder what you’d think of me if you were still here. Weirdly, I think I like myself better, maybe. I’m stronger. More grateful for things, more appreciative of what I have. Less anxious. Calmer. More forgiving. A much, much better mum.

I think I’d be a better wife, too, and sometimes I feel really guilty that you had to put up with Ems Version 1 all that time. Version 2 would have made you happier, I think. And prouder. But that could never have happened, because losing you is what has changed me so much. And that’s a weird double-edged sword I don’t quite know what to do with.

I keep going back to what Becca said in those days immediately after your death. The best way to honour Mike is for his death to be the making of you. I think it has been, in many ways. I mean, I certainly haven’t done it alone – I’ve done it thanks to the love and support from our family, from Jonny and Heather, from Becca, Vez, Hannah and Fiona, from Rachel, Rachel and Laura. From our beautiful friends. My wonderful colleagues. Our “internet people”. My new widow friends. I’ve been propped up. And God knows, I still have a long way to go.

But I’ve done six months of it. Six whole months of something that seemed an utter impossibility. I couldn’t imagine living without you when you were here. Sometimes it used to pop into my head and I would metaphorically put my fingers in my ears and la-la-la-I’m-not-listening, because the idea of being without you was so abhorrent. And it is abhorrent, don’t get me wrong. I miss you so much I sometimes can’t breathe with it, and I’m so aware that most of the time I get through the day thanks to a combination of avoidance and denial. The past six months have been agonising, and heart-breaking, and if I stop and think about you being gone for too long I feel like I can’t possibly go on.

And yet I do.

And maybe, weirdly, that’s something to celebrate. Not six months of being without you. But six months of going on. Six months of parenting our daughter, of doing my job, of appreciating the sea and the sunset and fresh air and a good cup of coffee, just like you would want me to. Six months of the kind of care from our loved ones that most bereaved people can only dream of. Six months of – I hope – honouring you in every way I can.

So maybe this milestone – six months – half a year – doesn’t have to only be a sad one.

Because grief, it turns out, is not all black. It’s not an unrelenting, unremitting howl of despair. Sometimes it is. Often, even.

But sometimes it’s gratitude for you having existed. It’s seeing your smile on our daughter’s face. It’s hearing her talk about you, about the time you went to the beach and found a snail. It’s hearing a story about you from Jonny that I haven’t heard before, or a video of you singing coming up in the memory function on my phone, or remembering one of our inside jokes, or realising that I’ve gone through something really hard and done it on my own and knowing how proud you would be of me. It’s still being in love with you, and still getting so much pleasure and wonder and enjoyment from that.

Because loving you and being loved by you is one of the greatest joys of my life. And that doesn’t stop just because you haven’t been here for six months of it.

While I’m worth
My room on this Earth
I will be with you
While the Chief
Puts sunshine on Leith
I’ll thank Him
For His work
And your birth,
And my birth…

Sunshine on Leith, The Proclaimers

So here’s to six months, Mikey. To six months of making it, to six months of honouring you, of living for you and with your love in my heart. To six more months of being in love with you.

Six months ago I loved you with my whole heart. Today, I still do. And I always will.

I love you, My Mikey.

Your Ems 💖

Reaching the peak.

Everybody’s life has a peak. A moment where they’re happier than they’re ever going to be again. I guess if you’re lucky, it’s pretty near the end of your life – maybe seeing your child get married, the birth of a grandchild, an amazing holiday post-retirement, or just a simple, quiet moment of love and companionship with your spouse. Who knows. I guess most people don’t know when that peak happens, because most people, I’d wager, work on the assumption that it’s yet to come.

I know I did. Before I met Mike I knew there was more out there for me. I felt the hope, and I lived for that hope. And when I met him, that feeling of things clicking into place – that’s what it was. Here was my hope. Here was the thing that was going to bring me that future happiness. The best was yet to come, but now I knew for sure that it was coming, and I knew whose hands it was in.

It was the same when I was ill after having Lyla. I was unhappy – desperately so – but I knew, deep down, that better days were coming. That there was a joy still undiscovered, a day when I would be blissfully content with my lot.

And it happened. Not long before the first lockdown, early 2020. Covid was on the horizon but we had no way of knowing what it would become. And everything else in my life was wonderful. A job I enjoyed. Colleagues I adored. Our best friends moving to live nearer us, to give us the local mutual support network we had been missing. Great relationships with my family. Lovely friends. A beautiful little girl who I was finally able to properly enjoy without the haze of post-natal depression looming over me. And, best of all, my Mikey. My amazing husband. We were happier than ever – recovered from those early days of parenting, reconnected, in sync, laughing all the time, and so, so in love.

In February 2020 we went to London. Our proper first trip away without Lyla. I was so anxious about leaving her, especially because Covid was becoming more of a thing, but Mike persuaded me we should do it anyway and that she would be fine (she was, of course). We walked the Southbank again. We ate delicious food and drank great beer. We saw Waitress, a musical that meant so much to us both, front row centre, performed by the composer Sara Bareilles. We both wept the whole way through. It was magical. I realised that we were getting our lives back, that the tough baby days were over and parenting was now something we both loved and treasured, and that complemented our lives and made us complete. I was blissfully happy. So was Mike.

Now, fast forward. Just over a year later.

It’s not that my life is over. I still enjoy my job. I still adore my colleagues. Jonny and Heather have been more of a support network for me than any of us could ever have imagined, and I could not be more grateful to have them. The rest of my family and friends, too – they have stepped up so amazingly, loved me so well, and I am so incredibly blessed to have them all. And of course, Lyla. My beautiful girl. Better and better every day, the light of my life, the centre of my world, the absolute joy of my heart.

But no Mikey. Never again.

And quite aside from the gut-wrenching pain of his absence, it changes all those other things, too. I don’t know if my career will ever be the same again now that I have to do it with grief brain and while balancing solo parenting. My friendships are fundamentally changed because I’m not the same person I was, I have less to give and more that I need and the imbalance weighs heavy on me. Jonny and Heather don’t get the support from me that they deserve – instead they have to support me, be there for me, prop me up. And, worst of all, Lyla doesn’t have her Daddy, and her life will always be poorer for that.

I can try and mitigate for a lot of that. I can do my best to focus at work, to be there for my family and friends in the way they have been for me, to do my absolute best to spend the rest of my life trying to repay Jonny and Heather for the unfathomable kindness they’ve shown me, and to love Lyla twice as hard, twice as fiercely, twice as well, to try and make up for her Daddy not being here. But it won’t ever be the same again. I won’t ever be as happy again.

That’s not to say I think I’m doomed to a life of misery. I don’t think that. I know I will feel joy again. I already do. Tonight, watching Lyla and Cora run around the kitchen singing “into the unKNOWN… into the unKNOOOOO-OOOOOWNnnn… into the UNKNOOO-OOOO-OOOO-OOOWN!” at the top of their lungs – that was joy. When Lyla leant across the dinner table and took my hand and said “you are my best Mummy in ye world” and puckered up for a kiss – that was joy. Sitting on the veranda watching the sunset with Heather, watching a great episode of TV, getting a lovely message from a friend – all moments of joy. And it’s also not to say that I don’t think I’ll ever love again. I hope I will. I have a lot of love to give, and one day, when I’m ready, I hope to find someone who deserves that and who loves me in the same way.

But even so. Even so, I know that my life won’t ever be the same kind of happy again.

Because firstly, my daughter doesn’t have her Daddy. That will always be a source of pain. Secondly, my beautiful in-laws no longer have their son, their brother, their uncle. My family don’t have their son-in-law, their brother-in-law, their honorary cousin who they loved so much. My friends no longer have their lovely pal, their brother in arms, their brilliant mate. These things will never not hurt. And thirdly because Mike – the best person I have ever known, my soulmate, my great love, the father of my child – will never be in the world again. And I will never, ever, EVER not be sad about that. My life will always be touched by this immense and uncontainable grief, no matter how much joy and happiness I find elsewhere.

So where does that leave me? Does that mean my life has peaked?

Honestly, I think it does. It has. And when I first came to that realisation it felt terribly sad and hopeless. It still does, in many ways. But in other ways, it’s almost a relief. That hope is no longer there to strive for. There is no end goal, no moment in the future where I will experience perfect bliss. Literally all I can do now is try my hardest to make the most of the time I have left. To understand that life is for living, not striving. Noticing those moments of joy and grabbing onto them tightly with both hands. To really know why it’s so important to live in the present and appreciate it for everything it is.

And weirdly, I see now that that’s how Mike lived his life. He said about his mum’s death once, “The worst thing I could have ever imagined happening happened to me, so I don’t worry about everything else so much now.” At the time I thought he meant that nothing as sad as that could ever happen to him so in the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter. But now I wonder if it was more that he knew what I know now. He knew that he would never again experience that feeling of being sure things were going to keep getting better. And knowing that allowed him to stop always looking toward the future and instead just… be. Stay in the present. Know that things won’t ever be that good again, but they can still be good. And most of all, to know that you never know when those good things might be snatched away, so you damn well better be sure to appreciate them while you’ve got them.

Mike and fatherhood.

I went in to check on Lyla before bed this evening. I don’t always – sometimes I just look at the monitor, watch for her breathing, and that’s enough – but tonight I wanted to see her. She opened her eyes, sleepy, unfocused, and said “Mummy…” – a slow, beaming smile spreading across her face – “…I lost my dummy but it was under Nemo.” Then closed her eyes again, turned over and fell back to sleep. I stroked her cheek and whispered “I love you, Lyla. I love you very much.” And then I left her room and fell onto my bed and sobbed.

I sobbed for Mike. Not because I miss him (although I do). Not because I am so sad that Lyla doesn’t haver her Daddy any more (although I am). But because I am so, so sad for him, that he doesn’t get to be here to see our beautiful little girl, to stroke her cheek and tell her that he loves her very much. Because he did. God, he did.

Let me tell you about how Mike was as a dad.

He loved it when I was pregnant. Loved it. His “love language” as they say was very firmly in the care-giving camp. He loved to look after me. And being pregnant was a prime time for it. He tucked me into bed at 8pm every night and cooked me whatever I could stomach that evening and rubbed cream into my belly and brought me breakfast in bed every morning. I remember one evening lying in bed with him watching a cooking documentary – a Nadiya Hussain, I think, or a Mary Berry – and I said “ooh, I could murder a slice of lemon drizzle” and he sat bolt upright in bed and said, excitedly, “Is that a craving? Do I need to do a midnight Tesco’s run?!” (It wasn’t, and he didn’t, and honestly you’ve never seen a man more crestfallen to not have to go to the supermarket in his pyjamas.)

He just loved all of it. I had an anterior placenta with Lyla which meant I often couldn’t feel her movements, so we had quite a lot of anxious periods of me lying on my side, drinking (disgusting) ice cold full fat Coke, trying to get her to move. We discovered that if he sang to her, that often would get her moving. So he would put his face close to my stomach and sing “Hey Bubble, woah Bubble…” to the tune of Craig McClachlan’s smash hit (!) Mona. He loved her even then.

And then she was born. And oh my goodness, you never saw a man so in love. I have so many photos and videos of him looking at her like she’s the most incredible thing he’s ever seen in his life (which she was). After she was born, I was in surgery for another 2.5 hours or so, so he was alone with Lyla that whole time. I asked him what he did with her and he said “I didn’t really know what to do, so I just… looked at her.” And from that moment on the two of them were hooked on each other. He just blossomed with love for her. Everyone could see it. He was doing the thing he was made to do.

She was a Daddy’s girl through and through. I have an amazing video of the three of us in the kitchen, her about 11 months, and me saying “Lyla, say Mummy…” and her replying “Daddy!” “Can you say Mummy?” “I say Daddy!” Nobody made her laugh harder than he did, swinging her around in shopping bags, turning her upside down, pretending to have lost her when she was right in front of him. Even as a baby when she was refluxy and fractious and screaming, he would take her out into the garden and walk her around each of the plants one by one, talking to her calmly about them and she would start cooing and giggling.

He was the most wonderful dad. He loved every minute of it, and it breaks my heart that he did all those hard parts – the night feeds, the endless nappies, the tantrums, the sleep refusal – and he doesn’t get to do this amazing bit. He doesn’t get to see the kind, thoughtful, chatty little girl she’s becoming. He doesn’t get to see things like tonight, where she found a water chestnut in her stir fry and asked what it was, and then when Cora said she wanted one too, she quietly and of her own accord found another one, fished it out and handed it to her saying “here you go Cowa, you can haff this one”. It’s not fair. He deserved to have all of that because he was the most amazing Daddy, filled to the brim with love for his little girl.

I try so hard to channel him when I’m with her. To be more fun, to be silly and whimsical and adventurous the way he was. I’m a poor imitation and always will be, but I do try so hard. But while I can try to make it up to her, there’s nothing I can do to make it up to him. And that’s what I’m crying for tonight. For what he’s missing out on. And how unfair it is.

Moving mountains.

I went for my Government-approved walk today with a friend who is a fellow Christian (yes, this is one of those entries – feel free to skip if it’s not your bag). Like me (and like most people!), she’s what I’d call a novice Christian – one that is still learning, still questioning, still growing in faith. We were talking about Mike’s time at home before he died, after he came out of hospital. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then said: “What do you feel about that time? Because I have spent so long asking God why He would have given you that hope only to snatch it away and I don’t understand it.”

I totally get that. It looks that way from the outside, definitely. But actually it didn’t – and doesn’t – feel like that for me.

Firstly because I am so glad he died at home, and not in hospital where I couldn’t have seen him, where he would have been surrounded by machines, where I couldn’t have held his hand as they stopped CPR and told him how much I loved him. Where his last conscious moment would have been of being told he was going to be ventilated and being so, so scared. I can hardly bear that he went through that – I certainly couldn’t have born it if those had been his last minutes.

And secondly because if he had died from heart failure rather than from sudden cardiac death I would have blamed myself forever. Because we could have got him diagnosed earlier, we could have stopped it from getting so bad. But nothing could have stopped him from dying from SCD. I mean, yes, there’s a possibility that it wouldn’t have happened if his heart failure hadn’t been so bad. But we can never know that as the risk – although increased in patients depending on the severity of their heart failure – is so tiny that it’s almost a freak occurrence, something nobody could have prevented.

But mostly I don’t feel that way because I remember what it was like when he was in ICU.

We were so, so close to losing him then. We weren’t allowed to go in to see him at first because he needed to have negative Covid tests, but when we were, they let three of us in instead of just me because they weren’t very hopeful of his recovery and wanted us to be able to say goodbye. His consultant later told us that they’d had a helicopter on standby to take him to Newcastle in the desperate hope of an emergency transplant. Everyone – the ICU nurses, the cardiac consultants, everybody – described his recovery as miraculous. And in those awful hours when we were waiting to be allowed to go and see him, Steph and I prayed for one thing: we prayed that he would be conscious again, even if it was just for a day, so we could tell him everything we needed to tell him, and for me so that I could see his beautiful eyes one last time.

And we got that. We got six and a half weeks, in fact – a month in hospital and then two and a half precious weeks at home. Weeks where he and I were able to talk for hours and hold each other and fall asleep next to each other and laugh together and make love and dance in the kitchen and walk by the sea and spend time with our beautiful little girl. Weeks where I got to tell him everything I wanted to, and where I heard everything I needed – how much he loved me, how strong he thought I was, how I had made his life and being ill had only crystallised in his mind that all he needed to be happy was me, Lyla, and our family and friends. I have no regrets when I think about him, nothing left unsaid, and that’s because of those precious weeks.

That’s not to say I don’t still feel angry that Mike had to die, and question why it had to happen. I do, often. At Mike’s celebration service the minister, Stephen, reminded us that God is big enough to take our anger, and it’s a good job because I have been angry a lot.

Even today. This evening, in the shower, I thought to myself “if prayer works, if faith can move mountains, why can’t people come back from the dead? Why can’t I pray Mike back to life?”

And then the realisation came into my mind, fully-formed, as if someone was whispering it to me: I did.

Those weeks we had with him – they were a bonus. A gift from God. I asked for a day and I got six and a half glorious weeks. And of course it wasn’t enough – nothing ever could be – and of course I wish things had ended differently. But I am still so, so grateful for them.

Because I got my prayer answered. I got him back, just for a little bit. I got to tell him everything I wanted to. I got to see his beautiful eyes again. And I will never stop being grateful for that.

The incomprehensibility of death.

I went to send an email today to a design agency we work with, and as I typed “production@…”, Mike’s email address (product1977@…) popped up as the first suggested contact. Understandable, as when I was last in work, Mike was the person I emailed the most. But it just hit me all over again that the person who owns that email address is just… gone. The person who had a Twitter account and an Instagram handle, who loved shark movies and American novels and strong coffee, who wrote occasional poetry and knew all the words to Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” – he’s just… gone. And all this stuff, all the things he accumulated, both physically and mentally, are now defunct. Devoid of purpose. Empty.

That’s what just baffles me about death. How can someone so alive, so vital, living with such fullness, just be suddenly gone? Be here one moment and gone the next? He told me he loved me and walked up the stairs and then just – left. The essence of him, what made him the person I fell in love with, the wonderful friend he was, what made him him – just gone. In an instant. And there’s no way of explaining why, or how, or where.

Of course I want to believe he’s in heaven and most of the time I do. I do trust that I’ll see him again and that even though my brain can’t comprehend the idea of heaven, I can trust that it’s there and he’s safe and happy and whole. But even that doesn’t help me to reconcile the fact that he’s not here any more. I know that for months now I have been subconsciously working under the irrational, ridiculous belief that if I do this right – if I’m a good, patient, kind, loving widow – I’ll somehow get him back. And it’s bullshit, I know – but I can’t seem to stop operating under that model.

I guess it’s a survival mechanism and I suppose I need as many of those as I can get. Because honestly, I don’t have the time or the space to truly grieve. I just don’t. And people will say – and do say – that I should, that I need to allow myself to feel it. But how can I? I have a job to do. A house to help run. A child to look after. And the grief I need to feel isn’t the kind I can pack back up into a little box when it comes time to make dinner for the children, or go to a Teams meeting, or put away the laundry. It’s all-encompassing and I’m so scared that if I start, I won’t be able to stop.

Besides, it’s too scary to go there when I’m alone. The idea of breaking like that with nobody here to hold me, to comfort me, to reassure me – it’s just too much. But it’s also too big a burden to place on any of my friends or family, really – especially under the current restrictions when they can’t be here in the way they might want to be. The only person I could have grieved like that with is Mike – he was the only person whose job it was to carry me through this kind of pain. But of course he’s not here to do it any more.

And so I have to just hold it in, forcing myself to shut it down quickly whenever a little bit escapes, hoping that those small releases of pressure will be enough for now, enough to get me through. Feeling like I might burst with it, my stability and sanity stretched thin across this huge, ever-expanding solid mass of grief that’s getting louder and more insistent and closer to the surface.

Death is incomprehensible and that’s what makes grieving so bloody hard. All day, every day, my brain is struggling with these huge unanswerable questions. Why him? Where has he gone? What did it feel like? Is he happy? Will I see him again? Will I be okay? Will I ever be happy? How is Lyla coping? How will she cope in the future? How will I cope? How can I go on? And even though I’m not consciously asking myself these questions, they’re always there in the back of my head. It’s so tiring, like trying to work two jobs at the same time, only one of them is this Sisyphean impossibility with no solutions and no time off.

It’s an endless loop of “I-can’t-do-this-any-more-but-I-have-to-but-I-can’t-but-I-have-to-so-I-will-but-I-don’t-want-to-but-I-need-to” etc etc that never shuts up, not for a second – it’s the first thing in my head when I wake up and the last thing in my head when I go to sleep, and that’s even with an absolutely mammoth effort to actively NOT think about it, to fill my brain with other stuff.

But nothing is ever as loud as his absence and I don’t know if that will ever stop being the case.

Living, not existing.

TW: This entry contains reference to suicide and suicidal ideation

When Mike first died, I wanted to die too. It wasn’t really a question in my mind. It was going to happen. All I needed to do was get through his funeral, say what I wanted to say in his eulogy, and then I could kill myself. I had always said that if anything happened to Mike, I would kill myself, and now that the moment had come, I was pretty well convinced that’s what I was going to do.

I mean, spoiler. I didn’t. But God, I wanted to. My family weren’t stupid, though. They knew how I was thinking and they took all available methods away. They hid all my medications and doled them out individually each evening. I still don’t know where they put them but I’m convinced my mum probably slept with them so I couldn’t sneak down to get them. They didn’t leave me alone for a second. Even if I took a little too long in the bath or shower Becca would be dispatched to come and knock on the door to check I was still there. And when I wailed on the floor, begging them to let me die, they said no. No. What about us, they said. We love you. What about your friends. What about what Mike would want. And what about Lyla?

What about Lyla, indeed. That was the one that got me in the end. This poor little girl had lost her Daddy – the most amazing Daddy that ever lived – and for better or worse, I was all she had. And no matter how much I tried to rationalise it to myself – she would be well looked after, she would be loved, she would be provided for – I couldn’t get away from the fact that she needed her Mummy. And she always would.

So I stayed. I stayed, and gradually it got easier to stay. Slowly, the other things – my family loving me, my friends wanting me to stick around, knowing that Mike would want me to go on – started to be part of the reason I was staying too. And it made sense. Lyla did – does – need me. When I’m not around she’s okay, but she asks – she wants to know where I am, when I’m coming back, whether she can go and see me. I’m her world (poor kid!) and I need to be here for her, forever. That’s non-negotiable. So I stayed.

She didn’t nap today. I knew she was tired and needed a rest, so I brought her into my room and we lay down on the bed together, covered with a blanket, and snuggled up. We spent the next hour cuddled up together, with her stroking my hair, smoothing my eyebrows, touching my cheek, pressing her hot little face against mine. Occasionally rearranging the blanket so it covered me up better, tucking it under my chin like I do for her each night. When I opened my eyes she opened hers too, as if she’d heard them open, and she beamed her Daddy’s big smile right at me, full of love.

This morning my mum and I were talking about all the things I have been blessed with since Mike died. All the friends who have stepped up, taken me in, held me, propped me up. My understanding, compassionate boss and colleagues. My beautiful in-laws. The amazing place I’ve been able to stay in and the house I’m getting to make my own. “Of course, I know you’d give it all up in a heartbeat to have Mike back,” my mum said, and I agreed. But then I thought about Lyla. About how our relationship has deepened, partly as a consequence of her getting older and becoming her own wee self, and partly because we’re all the other has now and we’re getting each other’s love on full beam, so to speak. And I thought to myself – would I give up that new depth of love I share with her to have Mike back?

I don’t know. It’s a hypothetical question that has no answer and in a way, there’s no point even thinking about it because it’s not possible. But the fact that I even hesitated made me realise that for the first time in the almost 5 months since he died, I’m not just carrying on because I have to any more. I’m not living for my family, or my friends, or in Mike’s honour. I’m not even living for Lyla. I’m living for me. Because if I had given up five months ago when I wanted to, I wouldn’t have got to spend that hour today cuddling my little girl, hearing her breathe next to me, feeling her little hand holding mine. And no matter how much I long for Mike, no matter how much I miss him and want him back and know I’ll never find the same kind of happiness as I had with him again, I’m glad I didn’t miss out on today.

And I guess that marks the moment I stopped existing and started living again.

Letter to Mike – February 2021.

Dear Mikey,

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. Not for any reason, really. Actually, no – there is a reason. This has been the most jumbled month of grieving for me so far. Some days I’ve been okay – my sadness tempered with a gratitude for having had you, for the beautiful things you brought into my life, for still getting to be here to experience them. And some days I’ve been right back to the early days of losing you – flashback upon flashback, desperation, loneliness, utter despair. Nothing stays long enough for me to get it down on paper, though. Nothing is fixed. It’s chaotic inside my head and there’s nobody here to quiet it. No YOU here to quiet it.

When I was scared, or sad, or anxious, or afraid, you would hold me. You would pull me close to you – in bed, on the sofa – and hold me. You would kiss the top of my head and lace your fingers through mine and stroke my shoulder, my back. And you would talk it through with me. You would let me pour out the jumble of thoughts that were plaguing me and then we would talk about it. And you, with your calm stillness, your quiet confidence, your unwavering love – you would bring me back to a steadiness, a certainty. The knowledge that despite anything else that was happening, you were here and you weren’t going anywhere. That promise which you made me so many times.

In the early days, my fear was that you would leave me. You would realise that you were too good for me and go somewhere else, for something better. But that was replaced. Our love grew more and more solid, more real, more determined, and then I knew that the only way you would ever leave me would be unwillingly. And you stopped having to promise me that you weren’t going anywhere because I knew it. I felt it in everything you did, in the way you looked at me, the way you held me, the way you lived your life with me and for me.

But then you got sick. You got sick, and we were so close to losing you, and when you came back to us and I saw you again, you took my hand and we cried and you whispered that you had thought you would never see me and Lyla again. And I promised you that you weren’t going anywhere. And you promised me the same back.

God, I wish we could have kept those promises. I think it’s the only promise we ever made to each other that we didn’t get to keep. We tried, didn’t we? We tried so hard. You fought so hard to get out of hospital and then when I found you I fought so hard to bring you back. And I’ll never forgive myself for not being able to. No matter how many times I’m told it wasn’t my fault. I can’t forgive myself because I broke my promise.

This has been a hard month. I’m not sleeping, which is new. It’s 2am now and I know sleep is a long while away yet. I’m writing here because if I don’t I’ll be alone in the dark and that’s when the flashbacks start. They’re so awful I can’t even share them with anyone, they’re just imprinted on my brain and mine alone forever, these horrible burned-in images that won’t leave me alone, not ever. I hate them.

I hate them, and I hate that this is my life now. Everything else is good – our beautiful family and friends, our wonderful home, our amazing, wonderful, brilliant little girl. But it’s all missing YOU. The glue that held my life together. The gilding. The shine has gone from my life and as the weeks go on all that happens is I come to realise more and more that it’s not coming back. And yes, I have moments of joy – when Lyla tells me I’m “the best Mummy ever”, when I talk with Becca, when Jonny and Heather and I watch Taskmaster and laugh until we’re giddy – I have those and I’m so grateful for them. But you’re still not there. You, beautiful you, your smile and your voice and your hands and your laughter and your love. It’s gone. And I’ll never know anything like it again.

I think about how it was when we first met. That rightness, that certainty, that sudden realisation that everything in my life had been leading up to meeting you and loving you. And knowing without having to ask that you felt the same. I can’t believe I’ll ever get that again. That magical, once-in-a-lifetime experience of being exactly where I should be at exactly the right time. A small, quiet miracle.

Remember our last trip to London? We sat in Pret and drank coffee and knew that the world was about to change, that a pandemic was coming and it would be the last time for a while that we’d get to walk around the city we loved and see theatre and be Mike and Ems, in our place. We couldn’t have had any idea then that this would happen, that a year later I would be sitting here a widow, with your beautiful light gone from the world. That our lives would change more than anyone’s.

I miss you. I miss you. I think about you all the time, I see things I want to tell you and send to you. Things I want you to know, so very badly. Julia talking about shark movies. The Frasier reboot. Lyla learning how to do a forward roll. A photo of Bill at Tolworth Tower. Niamh choosing her A-Levels. Your dad turning 84. Things, big and small, that you should be here for. That you deserve to be here for.

I can’t make sense of it. And there’s a comfort in knowing that, I suppose – in knowing that I’ll never make sense of you being gone, so in a way I don’t even have to try. The hope that somehow, in another life, I will understand. That you’re there waiting for me, that you already know why this happened, that you can see my life unfolding in front of you like a book and you know where I will go and what I will do and how it will lead me back to you eventually. That in the meantime my only job is to keep our daughter safe and loved and well. That nothing else really matters. That somehow, I will learn how to be happy without you, until the day comes that I can be happy with you. Some days that seems impossible. But I know it’s what you would want, and I’m trying. I’m trying so, so hard. For you, For Lyla. For me.

Dave played this song the other day. I had never heard it before. But it is how I want to end this letter, because it is everything that I feel.

You left in autumn
The leaves were turning
I walked down roads of orange and gold
I saw your sweet smile
I heard your laughter
You’re still here beside me
Everyday
‘Cause I know you by heart

I love you, Mikey. I miss you. I love you. I love you.

Your Ems 💖