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 💖

Letter to Mike – January 2021.

Hey My Heart,

It’s a new month. A new year. There’s even a new President. And yet you’re still dead. You’re still dead.

It makes no fucking sense. It’s like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. It shocks me anew every day – not first thing in the morning, because your loss, your absence, stays with me all night and is already settled in my mind when I wake up. But at some point through the day it hits me again. You’re gone. You’re not coming back. This is it, forever. For real.

Grief being stages is bullshit. It’s not stages. It’s a swirling fucking mess. It’s a spiral. I’ve been through every stage and back again, a dozen times or so. I keep thinking that I’m through the worst and then the worst comes back and smacks me in the face. Denial. Disbelief. Depression. Sheer fucking rage.

That’s where I am now. Rage. Anger. Not at you – not ever at you. I know how hard you fought to stay with us, how much you wanted to be here to love me, to see Lyla grow up, to live your quietly beautiful life. But at God. At God, who I prayed to every night – every fucking night – for eight years to not let this happen. Can you imagine how it feels to have prayed for one thing, one consistent thing, every night and to have that prayer disregarded? To have all your hopes, everything you begged and pleaded for, shattered? Every night I fell asleep saying “thank you God for Mike and please, whatever else happens, don’t take him from me. Anything else I can deal with. But I can’t lose Mike.” And yet I did. I lost you.

At your memorial Stephen said that God is big enough to take my anger. I hope so, because I am fucking angry. I am so fucking angry. He has taken you, my beautiful, beloved boy, and left me here alone. He has taken the best thing that ever happened to me, the love of my life, my soulmate, and left me to try and make something of my shattered existence. Even though I begged Him not to. Over and over. And try as I might, I can’t understand that.

And I get that I don’t understand it. I get that we can’t understand the way that God works, that the whole point is that it’s beyond us. But that doesn’t stop me from hurting. It doesn’t stop our little girl from sobbing at bedtime that she misses her Daddy. It doesn’t stop my entire being screaming out in longing for you. And I don’t know how to explain it – to her, to myself. It defies explanation. It’s unfair in ways I didn’t realise life could be unfair. It’s crushing me.

In the beginning I think I had some weird subconscious idea that if I did this right – if I was gracious and gentle and good, if I played the role of the accepting, trusting, grieving widow I would somehow be rewarded and you would come back. I know, I know. It makes no sense. But somehow I believed it. And now I know it’s not true. You’re not coming back, no matter what I do. I can be as good or as bad at this process as I like and it won’t change the simple fact that you’re gone and I’ve lost you and my life will forever be poorer. And what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

There is no hope here. There’s no lesson for me to learn, there’s no growth to be had, there’s no essential truth to be found. Your life is over and the world is all the poorer for that. I am all the poorer for that. I found perfect happiness – genuine, perfect happiness, a love that was real and solid and great and good – and had it snatched away with no mercy. And now I am left to deal with it alone.

I hope that wherever you are you are hearing this in the knowledge that we will be reunited. That my pain will end and we’ll be together and we’ll live out eternity in bliss with our beautiful little girl and our once in a lifetime love. I hope that right now you’re thinking “hold on, My Heart, it’s coming”. I hope that this life is nothing, a speck of dust, compared to what’s coming. Because honestly, I don’t think I can cope without having that in my head. I don’t think I can go on without the hope of a future where we’re reunited, where you take my hand and we loop our fingers together the way we always did and you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me and you’re proud of me and I did a good job.

Because that’s all I’m living for now. That and doing the best I can by our little girl. Raising her to be like her wonderful Daddy. To love unconditionally, to be true to herself, to find joy in the every day. I am trying so, so hard, even though it’s agony without you.

I miss you so much, Mikey. I miss your voice, your eyes, your smile. I miss your hand in mine, your arm around me, you laughter. I miss the things we loved, the jokes we shared, the sentences we finished for each other. I miss the way you made me feel, safe and whole and enough. I worry I’ll never be enough for anyone ever again. I worry nobody else will ever be enough for me.

I hope you’re happy, baby. Wherever you are, I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re warm and safe and loved and loving, I hope you’re counting the moments until we can be together again and that for you it’s not very long. I hope you’re watching over me and Lyla and loving us as much as you ever did, even though it’s from further away. I hope you know how much I loved you in life, and how much I will always love you. I hope I see you again.

I love you, Mikey. I will always love you. I will never, ever stop missing you and longing for you and wanting you here. I know that’s my lot in life now, no matter what happens part of me will always be lost because it went with you. And I’ll try so hard to build a new life, whatever form that takes, because I have to live for you and for Lyla. But please know this: you will always, always be My Heart. That will never change. And when I die I will welcome it with open arms because I will be coming to be with you. Mike and Ems, out of peril. At last. At last.

I love you. I miss you. I love you.

Your Ems 💖

Signs.

Okay, so before I start this post I have to preface it with a massive disclaimer.

Before Mike died if someone had told me something like the things I’m putting in this post I would have made all the right noises but inwardly be going “yeah, that’s nonsense”. And if I was telling Mike these things he would be the absolute first to tell me I was being silly and there’s no such thing as signs. And honestly, even now I’m not sure what I believe.

BUT, with all that said: since Mike died, I have definitely seen “signs” of his presence, or of some kind of presence helping me and comforting me. And I wanted to write them down, mostly so in years to come I can read back and remind myself that they really did happen, I’m not imagining them. And I may add to this post as time goes on.

So. Here they are.

---

A few nights after he died I was woken from sleep by his voice. Absolutely clear as day. He said “Lyla…” and I woke up immediately. It was the middle of the night. I checked Lyla’s monitor and she was awake (very rare for her during the night). I then noticed that I’d forgotten to turn the sound on the monitor so if I hadn’t been woken, I wouldn’t have known she was awake or known to turn the sound back on.

---

The night after, as I was falling asleep I felt his hand on my shoulder. Just resting there, for a few minutes. Not long, but long enough for me to notice.

---

The day before his funeral I was telling Becca (who was staying in my bed) that Mike used to stroke my back and my bum when I couldn’t sleep. That night, half-asleep, I felt a hand stroking my back and my bum. It lasted for several minutes. I thought “it’s a bit weird that Becca is stroking my bum but very sweet that she remembered and is trying to help”. The next morning, I realised how weird it was and asked Becca if she had been stroking my back and bum in the night. She looked at me like I had two heads and was like “…no Emma, I was not stroking you in the night.”

---

The day of Mike’s funeral we left the crematorium to drive to the church (about an hour away) and saw the biggest, clearest, double-ended rainbow. It lasted basically the whole way there and everyone commented on how they’d never seen a rainbow so clear or long-lasting. At one point my dad said “It’s not even raining?” and then there was a tiny, momentary smattering of rain as if to say “you want rain? I can give you rain! It’s not a sign, it’s just a rainbow!” – very Mike’s sense of humour, especially given he didn’t believe in signs.

---

I have been wearing Mike’s wedding ring on the little finger of my left hand. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight so it’s got very loose. Yesterday I walked into the laundry room to turn the light off and as I turned to go I felt Mike’s ring fall off my finger and then heard it hit the ground and bounce off the wall, then hit the ground again.

I totally freaked out and immediately dropped to the ground with my phone on torch mode and looked everywhere, in the cracks of the floorboards, under the skirting. I stood up and looked around in case I’d missed it somewhere obvious. Nope.

Went back to the ground again. Still no luck. Starting to panic, I stood up again to go and get Jonny or Heather to help me look.

And I swear on Mike’s memory that at that moment, I felt the weight of it drop into my pocket.

And there it was. In my pocket.

I have absolutely no idea how it got there.

---

I have no explanation for any of these things, but I do know that all of them have brought me comfort and that can’t be a bad thing.

Protected: Not being okay.

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

About Mike, Part 2.

I haven’t written here for a while and unsurprisingly that’s because January is AWFUL. I always thought Christmas must be the worst time for people grieving but for me, and I imagine for many others, New Year was much worse. It was a “take two diazepam and fall asleep crying at midday” kind of a day and the recovery since has been pretty tough.

One of the worst parts has been a big increase in the flashbacks I’ve been having to the day Mike died – specifically to when I found him. Last night they were overwhelming and I had to put on some white noise through my headphones and work really hard to swap out the images flashing through my brain with other memories, or even just remembering the feeling that being loved by Mike gave me. Letting it flood through me and fill me up, that warmth and safety and contentment.

Anyway, I ended up remembering some more little things about him that I wanted to record, so while I’m still battling through the worst kind of grief that I don’t want to share here (or anywhere, really) just yet, here they are.

Mike always turned our bedroom lights off using Alexa (thanks to him, our whole house was Alexaed). In the pause between him telling her to turn them off and them actually going off, one of us would always make a stupid face or start singing an earworm – a kids’ TV theme tune (fuck you, Timmy Time) or “toss a coin to your Witcher, oh valley of plenty…”.

He yawned when he was cold. And whenever he shivered, he would say the word “shiver” out loud.

The skin on his eyelids was so thin and delicate it was almost translucent. When he was tired the veins would become more visible, spidering blue and purple across the surface.

Before going to sleep we would have a cuddle. I’d lie in his arms and he’d stroke my shoulder or back, and say, word for word: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could fall asleep like this? Just imagine.” This was despite knowing full well that neither of us could sleep that way. But every night. “Just imagine.”

When Lyla was first born he did the first few nappies because I had a C-Section and wasn’t able to get out of bed for the first day. He had remembered from our NCT classes that for newborns you’re not supposed to use baby wipes but cotton wool instead¹ but he had somehow missed the part that you have to add water. So he was attempting to clean away the horrendous newborn poos (which, for those who aren’t parents, are black, thick and sticky, essentially like Marmite) with dry cotton wool.

He wrote poetry.

Despite not believing it about himself, he could talk to anyone. I once took him to a work party at a previous employer and he got cornered by one of my distant colleagues who was known for being quite difficult to talk to and a bit eccentric. I had to go off and do something and when I came back forty-five minutes later he was still chatting to them. I went to rescue him and expected him to be annoyed but instead he said “Oh, what an interesting person X is! Did you know they had [been to Y place and done Z thing]?” When Mike died, said ex-colleague – despite me having not spoken to them in years, and them only having met Mike once – sent me a condolences card which (like many others) remarked on his ability to make you feel important and listened to during a conversation.

When we watched Taskmaster we would waggle our arms in the air the whole way through the theme music.

Whenever we watched any TV show or film he would almost always have a story about captioning someone in it. It was a running joke that within 15 minutes of starting something, he would say “I captioned them”.

He loved the sea with an absolute passion and got twitchy if he hadn’t seen it in a while. He called it “my sea” until Lyla was born and then switched, almost unconsciously, to saying “our sea”.

He had long, piano-playing fingers even though he couldn’t play the piano.

We listened to the Elaine Paige show almost every Sunday, usually while driving to or from Mike’s sister’s house.

He knew every word to most Paul Simon and Simon & Garfunkel songs and used to sing along to Call Me Al in the car. He had the most beautiful, gentle, melodic, tenor voice and I loved listening to him sing more than almost anything.

¹ By the way, this is terrible advice. If you’re having a baby, buy WaterWipes and your life will be a thousand times easier.

And so this is Christmas.

And what have you done?

God, this has been hard. This has been the absolute hardest thing. I don’t know how I’m still here, I honestly don’t. I have forced a smile all day, I have faked excitement, I have made merry and been jolly and given Lyla every ounce of enthusiasm I could muster.

And now I’m done.

I’m done.

This is shit. It’s just shit. Our beautiful family worked so hard to get me through today and they did, and I’m so grateful to them. But now the night has drawn in and what’s left is me and my aching, broken heart which loves someone who isn’t here any more. And it’s overwhelming me.

Christmas was our time. We loved it. We loved every minute of it, from unwinding the lights to creating the playlists to ticking off the movies, one by one. From wrapping with Home Alone on in the background to crying over It’s A Wonderful Life with a bottle of wine to finding a local outdoor carol service and squeezing hands at O Little Town Of Bethlehem. Every Christmas I spent with Mike – which was every Christmas since we first got together – was special.

And now he’s not here.

Last night I had my first dream about him that he was actually in since he died. He had built us a house – white, carved from stone, basic but clean and bright and perfect. It was by the sea and in the neighbourhood was the perfect pub, the perfect village store, the perfect little cafe. And so many of our friends were there, old and new, some that he had never even met.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

I woke up with joy at having seen him but also deep, deep longing. Longing it be there with him and knowing that it’s not my time yet, that I have things to do here first, as much as I wish it wasn’t so.

And so I did them. I gave and received the presents that had been so carefully chosen and made and wrapped. I laughed and smiled and celebrated. I loved our daughter and our family extra hard to make up for his deafening, glaring, agonising absence. I sang along to carols and listened to prayers and remembered the baby born those thousands of years ago who is the reason for the hope I now hold close.

But Mike wasn’t here. He isn’t here. He will never be here again.

And that’s a loss and a grief so huge I can’t comprehend it. I find it hard to really look at it – to look at pictures of him and think “I will never see that face again, not in this life”. When I do it’s like I can only let a little bit of it in at a time and then I have to close it over again or I’ll collapse. Because he was – he is – my person. The person who made the good times better and the bad times bearable. The person whose hand fitted so perfectly into mine. The person who loved me for everything I was, with everything he was.

And my person has gone.

Nothing can make that better. And I think this run up to Christmas had given me some kind of false hope that maybe things would feel better once it was over, that somehow this would be a hurdle I’d get over and a marker of the end of one stage of grief and the start of another. But of course it’s not. Christmas may be over, but my loss is still as deep and broad as ever. When I close my eyes I still see him as I found him, a sight nobody else saw and I can never burden anyone with by speaking of it. When I go to bed at night the other side of the bed is still empty. When I wake up his loss is still the first thing I think of. Those things were true yesterday, they are true today, and they will be true tomorrow.

And I’m here, and I’m alone. Without my person, without the father of my child, without the reason I woke up in the morning. And honestly, I don’t know how to carry that. And I hate that I have to.

I am so broken without him.

I wish I could be more positive in this entry, on Christmas which is after all the day that we receive the thrill of hope and the weary world rejoices. But I find I can’t be. The lights will come down, the decorations will be packed away and he will still be gone. My beautiful, wonderful, beloved Mikey will still be gone.

And that’s all there is.

The watchful heart.

It’s been a tough weekend. But maybe that’s a good thing. Because by tough, I mean griefy – the word I’ve started using to describe the hours and days where the loss of Mike becomes overwhelming and I can’t distract myself from it any more. And although those times are awful, I guess they’re also healing. Early on Becca said “every cry is one cry closer to some kind of healing” and I remember that every time it happens and it does help. So does the analogy of grief being like waves – you’ve overcome by it and you weep and you rage and you’re desolate – but then it passes. And I guess as time goes on I’ll get better at seeing them coming and riding them out.

I certainly should have seen this one coming. My lovely friend Emma recommended the Abbey Calling programme to me, an initiative from the Abbey Theatre where, in return for a donation to Aware, you can arrange a call from a professional actor to perform your choice from a selection of poems, plays and songs. At first I wasn’t sure which to go for but then I saw that one of the selections, The Watchful Heart, featured two of Mike’s favourite poems –  When all the others were away at Mass by Seamus Heaney, and Everything Is Going To Be All Right by Derek Mahon.

The first is written from the perspective of a son reflecting on precious memories of his late mother, which spoke to Mike whose mum sadly died when he was 21 after complications relating to the same type of cardiomyopathy Mike had. And the second he had read to me just days before he died and will be one of my favourites forever:

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon, from Selected Poems

It so perfectly encapsulates Mike’s zeal for living, the way he found beauty and wonder in the every day, the way he faced his health difficulties with a sense of positivity and such grace. There will be dying, there will be dying – but there is no need to go into that. The actor, Muiris Crowley, who phoned to perform the pieces asked if there was was a reason we had chosen them, and when we explained he spoke to us with such kindness and compassion that it brought me almost as much comfort as the beautiful reading itself.

That evening we attended a virtual concert by New Irish Arts, whose orchestra and choir count amongst their numbers close friends of Steph (my sister in law) and are lead by the brother of a friend of both of ours. Steph’s friends both played at Mike and I’s wedding, and one kindly and heroically led the music at Mike’s funeral despite having only recently lost her own dad. So I knew it would be an emotional watch.

What I didn’t expect, though, was them to show Keith and Kristyn Getty’s beautiful performance of their song Consider The Stars. When Mike was in hospital, Steph sent him this song to comfort him during the long and frightening nights, and he in turn sent it on to me. It became something of an anthem of comfort for us both during that long and anxious time, and hearing it again was utterly overwhelming.

Consider the stars in the sky;
When it is darkest they shine out the brightest
Consider the stars in the sky
In every anguish, Oh, child take courage
Do not be afraid
Do not be afraid
He who made all of this, and who holds all of this,
Holds you in his hands

As anyone who has sat next to me while I sobbed at the theatre will attest, I have long been a believer in the power of the arts to move, to inspire, and to heal, but I’ve never had that power demonstrated so acutely in my life as by these two incidences on this one day. Together, they brought my agonising grief to the surface but simultaneously comforted me – comforted me with reminders of Mike’s beliefs, of his way of living, of the way they have imprinted on me and will always be with me.

I miss him in ways I couldn’t possibly have imagined surviving, in ways I pray my worst enemies never have to experience, in ways that can’t ever be fully healed. I long for him and fear that longing will never be dulled. But I also remember what I learned from him: to live, to search for the wonder in the everyday, to stand tall and lift your face to the sun and breathe in the sea air, breathe deep and fill your lungs with hope, and to go to sleep every night being at ease that a force far greater than us, far greater than we can ever understand, is watching over us.

My most fervent prayer is that in his last moments those words came to him: do not be afraid – he who made all of this, says “You’re worth more than this,” and holds you in his hands.

Because he was. He is. And He does.

And as for me? Well, I keep going back to Derek Mahon’s words: The sun rises in spite of everything / and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

Everything is going to be all right.

I hope so. Because right now, I can only hope.