A LUCKY MAN (PART ONE).

Every year, for as long as I can remember, just before Christmas my close friend Mike and I make an annual pilgrimage to Salisbury, a city about 25 miles from home, famous for its cathedral and other beautiful old buildings. It all started as a need to do Christmas shopping but has now become a regular fixture and a sort of ‘homage’ to the season and the memory of absent friends.

I nearly didn’t go last Christmas. Approaching then the third anniversary of Elaine being in the hospice and shortly after her death, it was all weighing a bit heavy in my heart. If possible, I could have quite happily stuck my head up my own backside, like an Ostrich that can’t find sand, and let the whole season- and bloody January- pass me by. But as I’m neither double-jointed nor a practising contortionist, I realised that I’d have to see it through, so just as well try to forget as well as
remember, and raise a smile or two, in amongst the tinsel and turkey and tears.
I’m glad that I did go because alongside the above mentioned, I found something else unexpected, but worth finding and holding on to.

We start the day early, get parked-up, then head off for coffees and a full cooked breakfast at Carwardine’s restaurant right in the middle of the city. We don’t rush, as this now is taken by both as an opportunity to chew the fat and bounce problems
and situations from our lives off of each other, and maybe find a previously unthought-of answer or two between the expletives and slowly cooling coffee.

Mike is in the process of selling his house and was telling me about the myriad problems that he is encountering along the way. He explained that he was feeling somewhat out of control with the situation, it being mostly in the hands of agents whom, he now realised, worked to their own agenda mostly regardless of him. Also many interested ‘buyers’ appeared to be living in a dream world of their own when it came to asking price and offers.

I, of course, being able to stand back from his predicament sagely announced that he needed now to take back control. That neither I, nor Elaine for that matter, would fully hand the reins to anyone else in such an important situation but would follow our own council and see things through that way.

By now, after years of friendship, I should have known that if you are going to lecture this man you’d best be sure of the ground you are preaching from. Mike sipped his lukewarm coffee in silence for a few moments churning over my ‘sound advice’ then looked up, locking eyes with mine in readiness to assault the walls of my pulpit.

“Perhaps a dose of your own advice would do you some good, my friend”.

I frowned my reply so he continued.

“You know Mark you are the luckiest man I know”.

The frown deepened but I stayed silent.

“No, I mean it, you are the luckiest man I know. It’s quite simple really. I know it’s difficult to think that way after what’s happened not just over these last three years but over the thirty before that. Look at it in context Mark, Elaine may have been constantly fighting an illness, a condition if you like, that was threatening her life but she wasn’t constantly ill with it, not at the start anyway, you still had fantastic times as well. A great life and great stories to remember and tell. I know how deep
your love and the whole relationship was, I was there Mark, along with others who were close too. You are so lucky to have had what you had, so lucky. Many people, even some in long term or who’ve had multiple relationships never get to experience the depth of love you’ve known, never get to know that level of interaction with another person despite years of being together. Yet you two had it in spades”.

He puts down his coffee cup that has remained in his hand. I am about to tell him that it is the depth and scope of that love that makes it all the more difficult to move on or away from, but he is in his stride now and continues.

“Many never feel or understand even, the level of commitment you two had, that’s why people love reading about it, Mark, because it’s an unknown fruit they can taste a little through your words.

“For goodness sake, Mills and Boon or Hollywood couldn’t make this stuff up. You are a free agent, not seeing anyone, and you turn-up to do a job on, as you put it “an ordinary Tuesday morning”, and you meet a woman who you fall in love with and who falls in love with you over coffee and cigarettes, for fuck’s sake how clichéd is that, but it’s true!

“You start seeing each other even though she’s married, then she gets cancer for the first time but it doesn’t break your fledgling relationship; then her shaky marriage collapses but she doesn’t come to live with you straight away no, you both tread carefully. She told me once that she wasn’t sure then if the two of you would even stay together at that point, but you did”.

He picks up the cup but puts it straight back down. My mouth opens to say something but my brain shuts it and opens my ears wider instead.

“You ask her to marry you when her divorce comes through and she agrees. Then on the eve of your wedding, it’s confirmed that she has a really serious cancer, if any can be more serious than others, but you still want her, it makes no difference to your love for her. So you marry and I was proud to witness that day Mark, because when you exchanged those vows you committed to each other and she was certain of your love for her, defiant in the face of whatever was heading your way over those coming months.

“It wasn’t that she needed you so much then, Elaine could be a survivor on her own merit, but the fact that she had you, had your love gave her that much more to live for. She wanted to survive for you, so much of what she went through was for you. In the end thirty years of it for Christ’s sake.

“And I saw it all, I may have been on the side-lines, but I saw it all and my friend it was a revelation to see. How the two of you dealt with all that came at you time and again. That infamous black humour that you both possess shooting back at the fear day after day. You laughed and joked at things and situations that would have had others running for the hills and all the time you had each other, nothing was capable of changing that, of breaking your relationship, your love. Not even
death”.

I feel a tear or two near the corners of my eyes. I’m re-living it all at multispeed in my mind as his words hit home, every one of them on target. Suddenly his calling me lucky doesn’t feel so far-fetched anymore.

“Mark you did more than many men in such a situation would have done or even been able to do, and you did it out of love. What could be better? Don’t think you didn’t save her because she died, you had thirty years of trust and love and togetherness that would be the envy of most. And at the end of her life you were there holding her hand as you promised, your vow solid right to her final breath, your commitment to her unshakeable to the last”.

He takes a deep breath as I make a point of blowing out mine.

“Sometimes I wonder if it all actually happened Mike, sometimes it’s all like a bloody long dream”.

“Of course it fucking happened. You’re too close sometimes mate, you overthink it when you just need to accept.

“You do it with other things too.

“And now you’re a free agent once again, like it or not you are, and the price of that is all the darkness and misery that set in. I witnessed that too and was well bloody worried on more than a few occasions as to what you might be desperate or angry enough to do. I prayed Mark, prayed that Elaine would be able somehow to be there for you, to help in some way and maybe just turn the tide enough to pull you off those rocks.

“Then what happens? Fuck me, Mills and Boon all over again. Out of your past steps a woman you’ve known as your friend for over forty years. She calls you one night when, in your own words you are in the depths of despair. That call could have come anytime but it comes then, you couldn’t make it up”.

I manage a half smile down at the table and the silent crockery on it. When I look up Mike’s gaze is taking no prisoners.

“I know that wasn’t just written for the blog it’s fucking true, I know it. But that call that night started another situation in motion for you whether or not you wanted it at the time.

“It’s still lockdown so what’s the chance of a romance growing between the two of you, but it does. There has to be a special kind of friendship for that to happen under such circumstances. And let’s bring Mills and Boon in once more. Marilyn’s husband had been dead some what?”

“Seven years then.”

“Seven years, and yet she’s not met anyone else in all that time, not married again or anything despite working a few shifts in a pub each week where she’s going to be meeting people constantly. You told me yourself that she had had offers but had always turned them down.

“This new relationship starts under the strangest of circumstances, almost fairy tale yet it manages to stay afloat and grow. You’ve been dragged backwards and forwards between the old and the new unsure of where your loyalties lie. Time and again you’ve said and written about how you must move forward and carry on, that it’s what Elaine would want and I know it’s what she would want, and Julie knows and Stacy knows and Bob knows and anyone who ever really knew her fucking well
knows but you’re the one who’s dicking about”.

“I’m afraid of letting go, Mike. Afraid of losing her by moving on, or forwards if you like. Afraid that by clearing out things, physical things even, I’m somehow leaving her behind something I silently swore to myself that I would never do”.

“But you’re not leaving her behind. The only way she can live on now is through you, inside of you and in those memories that you’ve written about. In the same sort of way, it’s how she lives on for me and no doubt for others too. But the last thing on earth she would want-and you frigging well know it- is for you to be sat alone lost and miserable in your own world. A prison in fact where those memories are forced to become your jailers and keep your mind and spirit in chains. It would torture
her Mark and you could easily end up having the breakdown that up until now you have avoided; do you think she’d want that, for one minute, do you think she’d want that?

“Elaine wasn’t vindictive she knew full well that you may meet with someone else, hell for all I know she may have even thought it might be Marilyn. The simple fact is Mark that she would want you to live to enjoy the life you’ve got and carry it lightly not lug it around like some despised dead thing that you can’t wait to be rid of. She’d want you to live for her, too.

“Think back to what we said all those years ago when Ian died, that he would live on through us and we’d always remember him, and we do. We’ll raise a glass to him later today in the Haunch (of Venison, a famous pub in the city) and we’ll remember Sue (my sister) when we go in the church across the road later on. They live on in that way and we’ll never forget them, but the keyword here Mark is LIVE, it’s no fault of ours that we are still alive or our fault that they’re dead.

“You did all you could to keep Elaine alive, didn’t she say as much in the hospice, and was it not worth it? Of course it was and you wouldn’t change anything and you aren’t being asked to. It’s not easy starting a new relationship especially when it has to follow what you’ve already lived, even if it is with someone you already know pretty well. But just enjoy it mate, go with it and see where it leads; Elaine won’t be leaving you because of it”.

I stare blankly into the void that the room has become around us as Mike tries his coffee once more. He slowly lowers the cup until it clicks on the saucer. Once more his eyes engage mine.

“I appreciate your advice about the house and I know full well that you’re right and it’s up to me to take control of my situation, but equally so it’s up to you to take control of yours. Elaine can’t do it for you nor me or Marilyn or anyone else, just you. So I suggest you bloody well think about doing just that and, in the mean time you can think on getting us some more coffee, this bastard has gone stone fucking cold”.

To be continued…