The scribblings of a widower in his sixties who has discovered the therapy of the written word. Join me on my journey from grief to satisfaction and how I eventually got there.
About me
I am a sixty-five-year-old widower, (In 2023). I discovered writing to cope with the grief of losing my wife of thirty-five years to cancer. I began by writing my first short story, The Slow Cooker (Link to the story here).
This was followed by a story about each of the five stages of grief. Here I am, over one hundred and fifty stories later and four novels in progress.
Follow me on my journey, whether you’re a fellow sufferer or just keen on a story.
READ MY NOVELLA; THE PAINTING, FREE!
Read how a young Scotsman falls in love with a woman in his dreams, to discover that she exists when he meets an old Egyptian painter. Read about how their meeting saves the world from nuclear war.
Today’s Story
A Year
Thanks to someone
I wrote this on 7th December 2019 on the run up to my first Christmas without my wife for over 30 years. Since then, the season has come and gone and 2020 has brought the scourge of Coronavirus. I have been lucky to meet four remarkable people. One of whom broke my heart, another continues to torment me with her total madness, the third my bezzie and front line angel kept me going through COVID19 and finally, best of all, the fourth, for whom I wrote The Painting.
As I sit and write this, the thoughts come tumbling back like apples from an upturned barrel, scattering across my memory. I will attempt to gather them up and lay them neatly on the page as an artist layers paint in a seemingly random manner only to reveal a beautiful, unique image for the discerning critic and layman alike. I suppose my main tool with which to assemble these previously indiscriminate reflections is time.
Where better to start, using this currency of existence than a round unit of its measurement, a year. Every event, as it happens, creates an “anniversary”, whether it be the simplest of things such as the typing of this last word or something more meaningful such as the birth of a child. The former is insignificant and will never be celebrated but has just as much right to an observance as the latter. One will occupy the few seconds it took to type the other will be marked on the same day each year as a celebration of the being’s creation as well as a measure of its time on this earth.
So, lets travel back, using our unique time machine that is memory, to the 7th December 2018. Christmas is less than three weeks away and preparations are reaching a crescendo of urgency. More so in the house of my in laws where, a week previously, the occupants were dealt a devastating, if somewhat expected blow. Tests had revealed that my wife’s Step Dad was suffering from terminal liver cancer and that he probably would not see the spring of 2019. This brought new meaning to the expression of observing the festivities of the season as this would be his last. Last, a strange word, so final with a multitude of meanings, from one trailing in the wake of others in a race to the description, somewhat optimistically, of longevity. No more anniversaries for him to celebrate after this last Christmas, just that of his last breath, an occasion for which he would be forever absent.
As crushing as this news was, along with its devastating circumstances, nothing could prepare us for the calamitous revelation that would follow it. With the benefit, or the curse of hindsight, we are able to layer into the occasion something that would come into being two months hence. Something of which we were ignorant but would taint this festive season for the rest of our lives. How do I put this other than there would not be one face missing from the Christmas 2019 photographs but two? The simple fact was that my dear wife was suffering the same fate as her step Dad only it had not been diagnosed. She was poorly and had been since early November, suffering with back pain and extreme fatigue. However, being a nurse, she suffered in silence rather than seeking help. Something which probably sealed her fate.
Let me tell you about my family, using the above date as a snapshot of time.
Friday 7th December 2018
My wife and I have been married for thirty two years, in fact Christmas Eve will be our thirty third wedding anniversary. We have three children. Sarah, Joe and Ellen and four grandsons to Sarah. The eldest, Kenzie,11, lives with us and has done since the age of nine months. Corey, Leo and George,9, 4 and 2 respectively, live with their Mum and her partner Michael.
Joe Lives in Wakefield and Ellen is living in Sydney Australia with her partner Craig following a tour of the Far East. Christmas planning has taken on another dimension with the sad news that Keith, my wife’s step father has terminal cancer. This will be his last Christmas although he hasn’t been given a definite prognosis. To look on the positive side, if there is one, he will be well enough physically to at least experience the festivities. Mentally, however, it will be a real strain for him and the rest of the family. In addition, from my point of view, there is the niggle that my wife is not too well either. The symptoms are nonspecific although there is an inkling that it may also be serious. All in all, I’ll be glad when it is all over. As usual, the Christmas day will be hosted by my wife’s younger sister and her husband who live around the corner from us in a large town house. There will already be one face missing from the table as Andrew, my Brother in Law’s mother passed away earlier this year. We shall endeavour to make the most of this normally happy occasion, trying to put the inevitable to one side. Who knows what the New Year will bring.
The day passed with more than a little sadness as the circumstances overshadowed the festive occasion. A week later the new year was welcomed in with the enthusiasm of a wet Tuesday in November. Keith deteriorated and was in and out of palliative care whilst my wife who had sought medical help was undergoing various tests. The culmination of these came in late January after her 59th birthday. The diagnosis was advanced Pancreatic Cancer. Again no prognosis was given but it was obvious that there wasn’t long left as she began to deteriorate at a greater rate than Keith. At the end of a three day period in the middle of April they were both taken from us and we said goodbye, a week later. By the time my sixty first birthday arrived on the 17th of May, I was a widower left with an eleven year old grandson to look after in a large four bedroom house. Alone after more than three decades in a relationship where we shared everything. I put the house on the market and it sold immediately, being in the fashionable end of town. Kenzie and I now live in a rented terraced house in the centre. Ellen and Craig came back from Australia for the joint funeral and never returned. They live in a lovely little pink house in a former pit village a few miles away with their two rescue greyhounds. Joe moved back North when his dream job came up, something his Mum always wanted but never saw.
As I sit and write this my mind is full of ideas about what to do next, the least of them being to buy another place. I have many good friends on Facebook, thanks to the books I read. Many of them know of my circumstances and have been very supportive, in addition. I have made some very good friends in the town whilst frequenting the small micro pubs that populate it. I have become very close to my older brother John and I see him once a week for a drink along with my old friend Chris. Returning to my Facebook friends, they are located all over the world from Lake Como in Italy to Tunisia, America, Australia and the Middle East. I am learning to play the bass guitar as well as music theory and have also taken up Arabic lessons. This still does not compensate for losing my best friend and soulmate at such a tender age. I have a feeling that something is around the corner, not least because she told me it was. “If you think I was a challenge, wait until you see what’s lined up for you next”, she said. And I do…
Postscript April 4th 2025
Where did that give years go? Here we are in uncertain times, where the two most powerful countries are run by maniacs. A billion gallons of water has flowed under my bridge.
I can’t believe this was written BL (Before Lina). Oh to have a time machine, eh? Give me back those five years and I’ll show you what to do with them.
Anyway, here’s looking forward to the next five – or whatever He has in store for me. Happy days!
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