A couple of weeks after my last blog came out a lady named Hazel posted a comment to it.

It is a long comment but I realised possibly many people would miss seeing it, which would be a shame as I believe it is written from the heart and holds numerous interesting points and parallels with Elaine’s own history. Also as I attempted to form a reply I found there was more I wanted to say; so what I’ve done is to put Hazel’s comment in full here followed by my reply to her.

I hope everyone who reads finds some common ground with one or the other of us or better still both.

Hazel: “Where to start? I was two thirds through reading “A Horse, A Husband, and Cancer” when your latest blog arrived in my inbox. I started to read it and immediately recognised myself as the friend to whom Julie had spoken about the wider distribution of Elaine’s (and your) book. I decided to pause reading the remainder of the blog when I sensed your anger and frustration at my not having read the book and surmising it was because I knew the reason was because Elaine had died and it was therefore like reading the intro and then skipping to the final chapter without reading “the bit in the middle”. I have since finished the book, and have read your blog fully and carefully, have left it for a while, and have felt sufficiently moved in so many ways that I must respond to your blog. To begin with, let’s get the context right of the conversation I had with Julie about the wider distribution of your book. She had asked whether I thought the book should be sent to someone newly diagnosed with cancer. Despite the fact I had not read the book at that time, my immediate and emphatic response was no. And now I have read the book. And I have been very moved by it in many ways. And my view of sharing the book with someone newly diagnosed remains unchanged. As I have read your work, and considered it, and the feelings communicated within, please do me the honour of taking the time to read what I have to say. To start with, I never met Elaine, nor have I met you, but I have known Julie for around 15 years, and I have known of Elaine through her, as Julie has shared with me her own sadness at Elaine’s repeated cancer diagnoses, the ups and downs of her treatments, the anecdotes that illustrated Elaine’s cracking sense of humour, and of course Elaine’s passion for horses. And I truly couldn’t summarise the book any better than Paul, the publicity officer from Forest Holme. I wholeheartedly endorse absolutely everything he has said. You should be very proud of the book, and although you say you are not the eloquent wordsmith that Elaine was, you are doing yourself an injustice. Your writing is absolutely from the heart, it has the power to move me as a reader, and the dark humour that comes from these situations shines through, as well as the obvious deep love you and Elaine had for one another. But – yes, I’m afraid there is a but… As you know from Julie, I too have had breast cancer. At the time I was diagnosed, some 20 years ago, I was not long divorced, and just 3 years into a new relationship with my now husband, Toby. I honestly believed I wouldn’t see the daffodils come out the following Spring. My cancer was very aggressive, Stage 3, it had spread to my lymph nodes, and the picture was bleak. All our hopes and dreams that were just starting to form, were dashed. And to compound things, Toby was involved in an awful, life changing, accident, just a few weeks after my diagnosis. It is perhaps a tired cliché to say that everyone’s “cancer journey” is different, but it is true. The wheel is not reinvented with every patient, so there are many parallels and overlaps, and this is what bonds those of us who have been inducted to this club, even though we did not ask or wish to join. But by the same token, as we are all flesh and blood our bodies react in different ways, as do our minds. So as I read Elaine’s story, I was vividly reminded of the brutal surgery I underwent, the drain with it’s (not very) fetching bag, the horror of coming to terms with my mutilated body, the long dark nights awake, the dark thoughts and deep holes… And then there were all those insensitive comments made by people who felt entitled to tell me that “the treatment for breast cancer was so good nowadays” and I would nod whilst screaming inside “it’s f***ing cancer, not an ingrowing toenail”. Boy, did I find out who my friends were, the house was like a florist for months, and a very dear (male) friend arrived on the doorstep one day with a very large melon in each hand. I don’t think he had really thought through the connotations of his actions, but we laughed and laughed. Like Elaine, my humour, my very good friends, some old, some new, and my parents kept me afloat amidst the dark times. As I read on, I was then reminded of the horror of the cool cap – gosh I really had forgotten that little gem. And what a waste of time that turned out to be. But hey, once I’d got over the absolute devastation of losing my hair, I dug deep and learned to see the benefits of not having bad hair days for 18 months. Oh yes, I remember how the nurse told me, as I made my way to the loo with the drip of docetaxel, to be careful, as I wouldn’t want to get that on my clothes as it would stain. Hello, I thought, it’s not my trousers I’m worried about or this blouse that I only ever wear for chemo and will never wear again, but you’re putting that stuff straight into my veins! More unwelcome reminders of the collapsed veins (still a problem for a simple blood test), the marking appointment for the radiotherapy – yes, I also have those little tattoos – the feeling of vulnerability whilst waiting in the hospital in that flimsy gown with all those other folks in their gowns as we waited for our turn and wondered silently but didn’t really want to know too much about what their cancer was… And who indeed ever thought that counselling at the h-o-s-p-i-c-e was a good idea? I never asked what the chances of recurrence were, I didn’t want to be told as I knew I’d focus on the negative, and saw my survival as an act of positive thinking and absolute reliance on my faith in the team of people around me. I spent the first 10 years in survival mode, and was undergoing treatments of various sorts for the whole time. Then I was cast loose from the medical world, on my own with no safety net, and spent quite a lot of the next 10 years looking over my shoulder, expecting, waiting for something, being reminded all the time of other people, Elaine included, who weren’t as fortunate as me in not having a recurrence or second diagnosis of any sort in all that time. It’s been a third of my life now and to this day no one has ever told me I am in remission, or have the all clear, or any these commonplace phrases that are bandied about, and I had to work out my own way to get back to normal, whatever that was. Like you, Mark, I’m still getting on with my “bit in the middle” although it’s taken an awful long time for me to come to terms with the dark thoughts that maybe I had cancer as some sort of punishment for something wicked I had done in a previous life – I just hope I enjoyed whatever it was… They say life begins at 40. It was certainly a very different life for me and a little black dog has accompanied me more than I would have liked. The deep hole into which I was plunged that day I was told I had cancer has been a hell of a climb and it truly changed me as a person. But I have laughed and loved and lost along the way. I have had some proper bugger it moments, like the day I chose a sports car over a nice sensible hatchback, and the day I married Toby in a fabulous red dress that made me feel a million dollars. There have been so many good things that have happened, including lots of daffodils, whilst I have been keeping a watching brief, and not a few losses too, as friends not as fortunate as me have died. But – again that word – had I not had cancer, I wouldn’t have met some truly amazing people, wouldn’t have made some very special friends, and whilst I wouldn’t have chosen to have had cancer, I see them all as a beautiful compensation for a truly horrible life experience. For me, reading A Horse, A Husband, And Cancer was all that Paul and Dave said. But it was also a very unwelcome reminder of the darkest of times in my own life. You did the whole cancer journey with Elaine. But you will know yourself that the vast knowledge of information you gained over 30 years was passed to you both on a need to know basis, a drip, drip of information. Had I been told on day one, or even within the first year, some of the things I learned as my own personal story unfolded, I would have been so very shocked, if it could have been possible to be any more shocked than that day I was told I had cancer. I simply could not have taken it on board, I wouldn’t have wanted to know, would have questioned how I could deal with it, and some of it would have proved to have been irrelevant in the end. For these reasons, I remain of the view that I would not recommend a newly diagnosed person to read your book. I do however, feel that it would be an invaluable insight for a spouse, loved one, friend, sibling, anyone who wants to try to understand the horrors of a cancer diagnosis. And also to see that a life can be lived, whilst walking hand in hand with cancer, that it’s not curtains right away, that there is still a huge bit in the middle to be embraced. It’s been an emotional time, Mark. -Hazel”

Hello Hazel, firstly my apologies for not replying sooner to your heartfelt and so beautifully constructed comment to ‘The Bit in the Middle’.

 I haven’t been 100% these last couple of weeks and only recently came across the email telling me it had been posted; and of course I am willing to read whatever you have written. Hopefully I’m neither foolish enough nor naïve enough to assume that everyone is always going to agree with my opinions or points of view.

Neither am I angry or frustrated but, I am a bit sad to think that Elaine’s book may become somewhat side- lined as it incorporates her death when I fully believe that it has so much to offer to all readers whatever their circumstances may be.

As I stated in the last blog, Horse Husband and Cancer is a book primarily about Elaine’s survival and the way that she accomplished this over almost three decades despite the odds against her. This to me is the whole core of the work and the message of optimism, when facing those odds, that I hope it puts across.

Hazel, reading your history (I won’t say ‘cancer history’) I see many parallels with that of my late wife.

The hopes and dreams dashed or at the least sacrificed on the altar of necessity. The ill thought out comments from friends, who don’t know what else to say or exactly how to react, and the meaningless prattling of others and givers- of-good-advice at any one time. Also those dark thoughts that always wake you in the early hours, setting your mind spinning, and preventing a return to the blessed oblivion of sleep.

And the constant fear of possible recurrence, whether you ask about it or not.

As far as I remember (Julie may recollect different) Elaine was never told that she was in remission at any given time. She/we came to accept that she either had active cancer or dormant cancer; black or white really, though often grey became the ‘new white’.

She underwent genetic testing via Southampton Hospital early this century, and it was they who confirmed that it was something she was born with; no fault of her own. They told us her lifestyle was helping to keep the cancer at bay and also that her mental attitude and outlook counted in her favour a great deal too.

I hope her writing conveys fully to the reader just how much her strength of spirit and mental defiance helped her to carry on living notwithstanding the confirmation of her fate, and the fear that brought with it.

She forced herself to take an active interest in her illness and the multitudes of treatments for it. She became fully involved, and was never prepared to just be ushered along, side-lined or left without explanation by the various medical teams who came and went throughout it all. As much as was possible she ‘steered the bus’ and I have no doubts that this too aided greatly in her staying alive for so long.

Hiding away would have just meant the cancer hiding too, and growing in the dark. I hope all this comes across to her readers, as do her fears and love for life.

There is defiance and fire in your words too Hazel. I think that you and my late wife have much more than just cancer in common. She would have loved your ‘two fingers’ to fate in that choice of red wedding dress and the sports car.

I have tried, since reading your comment, to imagine how Elaine would have reacted to the book had she not written it but been given a copy as a new cancer patient herself. It’s a difficult one to gauge, but I think she would have been shocked to think that this may be the road she too was heading down and may well have stopped reading, and left it for a time, but I know she would have ultimately taken it up again and read on.

She would have recognised that it’s telling one persons’ journey and how they dealt with that journey as it unfolded for them. It doesn’t follow that everyone on similar journeys will have the same experiences along the way or even encounter the same ending but, I think she would have found real value to her situation within the pages.

Elaine believed in preparation, and in being forewarned and forearmed as much as possible. We always asked for the truth, no matter how bitter, but I have to acknowledge that this is not the wish for everyone (my own sister included) and that each must make their own choice.

You mention your thoughts about your situation possibly being due to transgressions in a previous life; that made me think. Elaine did believe that she had lived before and that we two had been together at some other time. She did wonder out loud sometimes if what was happening was indeed a punishment, an ordeal if you like, for former wrongdoings.

Maybe that’s the case and if it was well debt re-paid, but if so what’s the point in our fighting back or holding on unless the lesson is within the struggle and not the outcome.

Whatever it is, one way or another, as I sit here now I honestly don’t give a damn; I love her unconditionally and wish to God that none of this hell had ever occurred for us.

Today cancer can no longer hide in the shadows as well as it did when Elaine was first diagnosed. A victim of its own success, its being gradually dragged out into the light. With one in two people now expected to become sufferers the battle to defeat it is now happening in the open and not in the trenches.

I reckon it will be defeated, bit by bit in its various guises, but people will still get ill and afraid.

This is where I think Horse Husband & Cancer has a place. As I said in ‘The Bit in the Middle’ death finds us all but we don’t have to throw up our hands, sit down, and wait.

 I believe that Elaine’s story can inspire others to carry on living; showing that it is okay to do so, to resist, push back against and question that which was once seen as unstoppable.

My personal belief is that the truth is out there and better if known. It’s how I would play it for myself. I have come to believe also, from my experiences alongside Elaine, that most if not all, of human beings possess a far greater strength within themselves than they often are aware of and, that the most adverse of circumstances bring forth those strengths when they are most needed for that individual, and those around them.

I think you are the living proof of this Hazel.

We have affinity on more points than we don’t but on those, we are free to differ. Same destination maybe, just a different route.

My thanks again for your time and words and also your kind comments on my writing abilities (I still think Elaine has more than an occasional hand in it all!!)…Mark.

A few weeks ago I was talking with Elaine’s best friend Julie; we were discussing Elaine’s book and possible ways of bringing it to a wider public. This had been the subject of a previous conversation between the two of us and Julie now mentioned that she had since been speaking with a friend of hers who has had cancer, now follows the blog, but has not bought a copy of the book.

Why not? Well, because Elaine dies, and she does not wish to be dwelling too much on how this could be the fate awaiting her also.

Julie could see her point and thought others may think in a similar way and, as we talked I was swayed to think the same too, after all who wants to be prompted that death lurks constantly in the shadows. But something didn’t feel quite right to me and I’ve since thought a lot harder about the whole reason and being of the book and I now believe that this line of thought is by-passing the point of it completely, a bit like reading the intro’ then jumping to the last chapter missing out all that is in between.

I encouraged Elaine to write about her life and the struggle with ever recurring cancer because I thought, as she came to also, that to read about her survival over nigh-on three decades with an illness which should have killed her long before, would be an inspiration to others facing a similar situation; showing the world that it is possible to live a fulfilling life despite all that that life sometimes throws at you.

The keyword here to my mind is SURVIVAL. Horse, Husband and Cancer is not a book about Elaine’s death; it was never intended as such, but it is a book about her survival.

She didn’t write about her death that was going to be left to me (though neither of us realised it at the time), she wrote about her life whilst being honest enough not to ignore that the end of it was inevitable at some time or another. But then isn’t that the case for all of us?

Stop reading this and for a moment or two look around you. At your family if someone is close by or a pet maybe. Glance out of the window, can you see birds perhaps, or trees plants and grass; can you see your own reflection?

Every living thing you just acknowledged will one day die, that is the only absolute in life and it comes to all, and unless you face execution or plot suicide you just don’t know when that ending is going to be.

I somehow doubt many of us could live comfortably if we were born with an exact expiry date tattooed on our foreheads. But though it is the only sure thing, to dwell on the inevitable ending is not to live, and like it or not, we’re stuck with it so have to make the most of the time we have.

Elaine’s death came at the end of her life, not the beginning or the middle but the end, yet the pages of her book sparkle with her words of wit and humour telling about her life so far; no punches are pulled the good and bad wherever and whenever they occur are laid bare, though always with hope too, standing immoveable on the side line.

She could have written about this some fifteen years previously, “How I’ve Survived Cancer Three Times to Date” would then the fact that she now is dead make such a work less worthy of reading?

Death and life are inseparable (on this earth at least), two sides of the same coin no matter how thin you beat the metal. Elaine and I both came to believe that it’s not about the length of time you live, but what you do with that time that counts.

Between birth and death comes the ‘middle bit’, whatever time that is it’s ours, and down to each of us how we live it.

“You are not responsible for the hand you are dealt, but you are responsible for how you play it.”

 Elaine wasn’t really a great one for watching films but one that she did love and watched on several occasions was The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise. With all due respect to Mr. Cruise it was the storyline that she loved (I hope!) especially the ending where Cruises’ character faces the Emperor as they talk of the now dead Samurai leader they both admired for differing reasons.

“Tell me how he died” asks the Emperor.

“Let me tell you how he lived” comes the reply.

This to me sums up Elaine’s story and the book. It’s her telling of how she lived that is more important than my telling of how she died; but, two sides to a coin, they are inseparable and both voices have their place in the story, though to my mind at least there is nothing to fear in either of them. Hear one hear the other, they cannot harm you, only your own fears can do that.

                                                                              *****

I was sat with Marilyn one evening when out of the blue she asked me “Mark, are you afraid of dying?”

“No”, was my straight forward and honest reply.

“Perhaps I may worry about the manner of death but I’m not really fretting about the event itself. Elaine came to see it as the beginning of a new adventure, I try to see it that way too; what’s the point of my living in fear of death, it’ll come whether I worry about it or not.”

My answer wasn’t meant to be offhand or flippant in any way but I’m still somewhat numb around the edges about it all. Elaine and I lived pretty much constantly with  possible death ticking off the years in our attic and, to a certain degree, just got used to it being there. It’s no longer there now, though I will admit to having strongly considered the option of inviting it back on several occasions since her passing. But I have reached the conclusion that unless I am prepared to bring it about myself I have no right sitting around on my ass wondering if it’s just around the corner for me; fuck that, Elaine would be the first to say “Get living, you’ve a bit in the middle still to complete.”

As far as death is concerned for me, my bag is packed and it’s next to the chair in the hallway by the front door; but I’m not going to be sat there waiting with it, oh no, if he calls and I’m out then Death can sit in the chair and wait, or come looking for me as he pleases.

Whenever and wherever he catches up with me (and he will) I won’t be afraid, we’re old acquaintances after all. I hope we can shake hands like gentlemen, I might even be able to say “Thanks- for taking the scenic route” but I’ll be okay in his presence as he’s my ticket to Elaine again, though what she’ll have to say about all that will have occurred since she left, well…

                                                                          *****

The near certain  knowledge that one day death was going to part us had the positive effect of drawing Elaine and I even closer together and a trusting relationship of love, firmer than a promise freely given, was the result.

Did that love gain strength as time progressed? Yes I do believe it did. Due mostly to two souls determined for as long as possible not to be parted, thus causing the fire between them to burn brighter and fiercer.

Besides everything else we were allies; bonded together to fight a common foe our strength far outweighing the sum of our parts.

Deep within we both knew that though we were winning many battles the enemy only had to be victorious once to win the war; and make no mistake it was a war, a war of attrition. As I have stated before our lives became battlefields but oh! when the guns briefly ceased and the smoke cleared the views were beautiful.

“I wouldn’t change anything Mark, not even the cancer, if it meant we couldn’t be together.” Some of her last words to me in the hospice, and despite whatever it did or is still doing to me, neither would I.

It is an ongoing comfort to me that nothing and no one can take a single second away from what Elaine and I had. Neither death nor time can alter any of it, it stands above them both proud and defiant. It knows no ending.

                                                                         *****

To be quite truthful I have been far more afraid of living than of dying since I lost Elaine. Despite all that was going on in her life she remained a rock steady influence in mine. Knowing when she died that that influence was gone, at least in the physical sense, was and is, one of the hardest things I’ve had to bear.

I remember so vividly that last breath, then my standing up from the bed and just gazing at her there, so totally still; the anger and fear vying inside of me as to which would break out first.

 Hopeless despair beat them to it.

I arrived home from the hospice that morning a few minutes before Julie joined me. Time will never erase the utter and total feeling of dread at that moment; I fear its memory even now two years later. Walking into our lounge, the vacant chair before her computer, now mine, an unwanted legacy like everything else around me that I can never give back.

The room itself a cold empty void, but nothing compared to the one inside of me.

Quite how I’ve managed to place one foot in front of the other since that moment I will never fully understand, but I have and will continue to do so.

“Fill in the middle bit Ted, you must fill in the middle.” She never said it as such in life but shouts it every day since she died.

With this post I am not trying in any way to belittle the genuine fears of others, far from it. But I do want to show that Elaine’s final and only book is, despite some of its content, an uplifting and inspirational read. It is deserving of being exposed to a wider audience, and that audience deserve to hear of its author’s hopes and fears’ in equal measure as she fully intended when she wrote it.  I know there are friends of hers who have not bought a copy, sighting that they knew her anyway or don’t need it to remember her, so there is no point.

“Yes there fucking well is!!”

If you don’t want to buy it for you then bloody well buy it for her. I witnessed the huge effort she made to get it finished during the last year of her life in spite of increasing illness; and no, you did not know her as you thought, no one did, not even me.

I have since read was is not in Horse, Husband and Cancer amongst other writings never published and, putting that with my unspoken knowledge of her I can honestly assure you all that the book only scratches at the surface of what she, and I, lived through, but boy, some of those scratches run deep and are well worth exploring and passing on.

Paul is the publicity officer at Forest Holme and has read Horse, Husband and Cancer. We had coffee and I asked him for his honest opinion on it as someone who never met or knew Elaine.

 “It’s terrific Mark, I don’t even like horses yet from the first few pages I was hooked, I want my wife to read it. I can’t believe it’s the work of a non-professional writer. Her zest for life and strength of spirit leap out at you. I felt that I knew her, what a gift to do that to a reader. When I got to your part although it was written as a series of blogs, it gelled so perfectly, I got to see Elaine from a completely different viewpoint; and your love blossoms through it all. It’s a stunning work.”

Dave (name changed) comes to sweep the chimney at home and maintain the woodstove. He is ex-marine SBS, a softly spoken man but I feel a deep one. He met Elaine a couple of times but did not know her well. Last year he saw a copy of the book here at home and he later bought his own.

He was here again just before Christmas and I asked him if he had read it.

“I left it for a while as I was too busy or too tired to start. Then one night I went to bed a bit earlier as I had an early call next morning, so I thought I’d give it a quick glance through. I couldn’t put it down, honestly Mark I couldn’t, I was still reading at 12.30 in the morning it’s so compulsive, you just have to know more. She’s a brilliant story teller and I love her ability to draw you into that story, I felt I was a part of it, like I was a witness to all that was happening.”

Elaine did not hide away from either life or death. Of course she wanted to live as much as any other also there were times when she just wanted bury herself away in the dark and forget; but the light within her, that WAS her, would not allow that to become the norm. She knew deep down as her words show that hiding away makes no difference, insomuch that spending time avoiding is wasting that time which could be better employed elsewhere.

She faced that which she lived alongside of for so many years determined still to have a life, a ‘middle bit’, and in spite of it all she bloody well achieved just that, I know I was there, and though she left this world over two years ago you can still join her on the journey through her life and experiences, anyone can, through the pages of her work; take a chance on that journey and I very much doubt you’ll be disappointed.

                                                                                   **                                                                     

This book can’t cure neither can it kill, but it just may help if when trying to face down the darkness within, you realise that someone has shone a light and trod there before you.

Find the book here: Amazon UK Amazon US

It’s a bright fresh and beautiful morning. The sunrays caressing the wet landscape give everything an edge of unnatural clarity. Every blade of grass seems edged with crystal bringing out the colours of nature as though they had just been created; it is a joy to drive through.

This is a day in waiting since Elaine died, one I knew I’d be facing at some time or another and I want it to be on my terms and not a chance encounter.

It is about fifty miles from home to Devizes. I can’t now remember the first time we did the vintage fair there but it was one of our more recent venues. Our best fairs’ were consistently those in or around London, Kempton being the best of all, but I always enjoyed travelling in the opposite direction (west that is) as it meant not driving mile after mile on boring motorways, and the countryside is so much nicer.

I always drove. Elaine would sit, phone in hand, checking some social network or other, mostly work related stuff but not entirely, especially after she started to write more and more. I remember the light from her phone screen would distract me if it was still dark; oh for that distraction now.

Later we would chat about the day to come and other things or just sit quietly. When you are so close with another there is no embarrassment in the silence.

I have told no one of my plan for today. This is something private to me, but make no mistake it is still a big undertaking.

Why?

Well inside of me in my heart and spirit whatever and wherever that is, she is still alive somewhere though I know the physical woman is no more; but since her death I’ve struggled with, resisted even, that fact. Despite the near ever presence of death Elaine was a great force of life (perhaps partly because of it) and since that was taken away I’ve felt an urge to seek it out, see if it’s still present in this world, somewhere we knew together perhaps.

From my experiences over the last two years I know that she’s not waiting in hospice, hospital, burial ground or our home, so what am I looking for today?

 Well I’m looking for re- assurance that she was.

That she was my wife, my lover, my world and we actually did share a wonderful life together.

It may sound mad but sometimes I’ve caught myself doubting it. I read once about a man whose dreams were so vivid and real that he couldn’t differentiate between being awake or asleep.

I was living in this house alone when I met Elaine, I’m here alone again but three decades have passed and sometimes it feels like I dreamt the lot away. That by chance I met this fabulous woman and we became friends and fell in love; she came to live with me, we married and had lots of adventures some good some not so, but we were always together there for each other, and then and then…..I spoiled it all by fucking waking up!

I have to know I’m not dreaming now. It doesn’t work at home it’s all too familiar I have to try away from there.

Re-visiting A&E with Marilyn has helped me to grasp this concept; Elaine wasn’t there but the echoes of what had been were, at least they were for me.

That was a chance encounter, today is planned to see if those echoes live elsewhere too. This is a crucible I want to pass through, part of a process that may allow me to live the life I have left in a worthwhile manner, allow me to carry my past proudly before me rather than dragging it like Marley’s chain throughout my remaining years.

We must have done hundreds of fairs in our time. Devizes wasn’t the most lucrative but it was a friendly venue and well run. Elaine sold literally tens of thousands of items in her life, she was a born seller who would have had no problem selling water to a drowning man.

She bought from auctions, boot sales, shops and private calls but was always most pleased when something came her way for free.

I remember as I drive…

We’d been invited to a dinner party near Oxford but there was no room for us to stay so Elaine booked a hotel for the night a short drive away. I don’t recall the town but the hotel was a Georgian building fronting the main road with parking to the rear where there were a number of guest chalets, though our room was in the main hotel overlooking the road.

The road was wide and on the opposite side a row of small houses and cottages one of which had a large rubbish skip outside. We arrived late PM and on looking out of our first floor window Elaine made a discovery.

“Maaark – look on top of that skip is that a meat safe?”

I did look and indeed it was a meat safe, a pine Victorian meat safe.

“They obviously don’t want it” she continued looking up at me, “what do you think?”

I had to agree it was a good chance, but knew from past experience you have to be cautious asking for something others regard as crap or they become suspicious that you know something they don’t – which we did.

We reasoned there was no time now to act, we had to get ready and go and the cottage looked shut up with no car outside; just walking over and taking it would not be such a good idea either as people were about in the street and technically it was still another’s property.

Returning late that night we decided we would sus’ out the situation next morning.

We were first down for breakfast, the dining room facing the road; as we ate a car drew up next to the skip the sole occupant going into the cottage.

Elaine could barely contain herself; breakfast was hurried and no other guests had appeared as we crossed the road to try our luck.

She knocks the door as I hover by the skip. A rather bemused looking man appears and Elaine fixing him with a beaming smile hardly gives him chance to think.

“Hello-we’re-staying-across-the-road-and-noticed-the-old-meat-safe-in-your-skip-if-you-don’t-want-it-can-we have-it-please-we-might-be-able-to-do-something-with-it-and-you’ll-have-more-room-for-other-stuff?”

He looks from her to the skip then me then back to her, she is still fixing him with that smile.

“Yeah…. yes take it if you want, fine by me but it’s a bit knocked about.”

“Oh thank you so much, my husband’s good at repairing things he’ll soon sort it out.”

She moves towards me when, “Do you want the other one as well?”

“Other one?”

“Yeah there’s another, still fixed to the wall out back, only going to chuck it anyway.”

“Can I come and see?”

“Sure.”

He turns back indoors, Elaine looks at me eyes wide I motion her to leave the door open as she follows our would-be benefactor into the cottage.

She’s soon back.

“It looks good, bit smaller than this one, he’s going to unscrew it.”

Five minutes pass, then another five and again; loud noises and ill muffled swearing filter through the building to us, Elaine goes to investigate.

She returns in a minute or so. “He’s got it unscrewed from the wall but it seems to be fixed to the floor too.”

Another ten minutes and he appears, hot and sweaty, carrying a slightly smaller version of the first one though it’s a bit more battered, but Elaine is pleased and thanks him profusely as she takes it from him.

 He still looks bemused as each with our separate prizes we turn back to the road.

Traffic has built-up considerably and as we wait kerbside we both look over to the hotel. It seems that near everyone is now down for breakfast and that we are the object of their collective interest.

Many eyes follow as we negotiate a path across the road. They continue to do so as we make our way along the side of the building into the blind spot of the car park.

We think it’s over but no, the chalets all seem to be changing guests and we now become the subject of their scrutiny and whispers as we walk the gauntlet to our pick-up truck at the far end of the car park.

Setting down our goods we each automatically go either side of the back and begin unfastening the cover. Elaine starts to laugh and smiles smugly over at me.

“Sod them, they can have their amusement, these two are going to pay for most of this trip.”

And after a few ‘skilful’ repairs, they did.

Other fun times spring to mind as my odyssey continues and then suddenly I’m on the outskirts of town; Devizes, not a large place but very pleasing to the eye, I would recognise it had I just been dumped here.

The road curves into the town centre the Corn Exchange appearing on my left and I turn down the road beside it, following along and into the car park left again as the shallow hill levels out.

‘Our’ parking space is vacant, waiting, so I back in and switch out the engine; didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath as I exhale deeply. Last time I was here Elaine was alive, how often in my remaining days will I go somewhere and that thought occur to me.

I sit in silence for a while; there’s not many people about and thankfully no one takes any notice of me, but I’m not here to sit so I go buy a ticket for the car then walk my way back uphill towards town.

I go via the far side of the road, not the familiar steps through the car park (I’m not sure why) and soon I am alongside the Corn Exchange building.

The blue side doors, that’s where we unloaded and loaded again later. Parking out front is limited so many of us had to double park and work quickly. It didn’t seem so much like fun then why do I remember it as such now?

I walk to the entrance, everything feels so familiar, and without hesitation I go straight on in. The foyer is busy but I carry on into the main hall. It’s not too crowded and although it’s a craft fair it could easily be a vintage one, the stalls are colourful and glittering many heralding the coming festivities of Christmas and New Year.

We always had the same spot nearly opposite the inside of those blue doors.

A young woman occupies it now. She’s selling hand knitted goods which all look very bright and cheery; she stands knitting and smiles warmly at those passing by.

Maybe it’s her smile that triggers it, Elaine always smiled, I can’t rightly say but suddenly it’s the vintage fair again just before opening.

Elaine is stood phone in hand taking pictures of her stall, meticulously set up to best effect. She walks around for different angles and shots to go on Facebook etc later on. She has crammed as much as possible into the available space; each object seems to flow seamlessly into the next, the colours some vivid, some fading with years vying with one another for the beholders eye. Solid memories of the past to hold today.

My heart melts.

Opposite is our great friend Lynne, her stall as ever a stunning array of wonderful items and desires arranged to tempt the senses. To our side the couple who sell mostly Art Deco pieces, all beautifully restored.

I’m just fetching a cup of tea for Elaine from the small kitchen. As I stand and watch myself in such a familiar role, I want to call out; “Hold her you fool and don’t stop holding her ever; there’s so little time left, make every second a prisoner, make every second a lifetime, make every second for ever!”

A passage from Dickens A Christmas Carol comes to mind; “These are but shadows of the things that have been, they have no consciousness of us.”

Elaine is smiling, chatting to other stallholders, putting down her tea and forgetting where she’s left it, laughing with Liz about the music playing in the background, looking forward to the day.

As I watch the vision fades, and feeling totally alone no one notices as I blot away a tear that’s claimed freedom from the corner of my eye.

I would give a lifetime just to hold her once more, just for moments to turn back the clock and live it for real all over again; but if I’d had the certain knowledge of today back then would I have acted differently towards her and would those actions somehow have spoiled that which we did live and enjoy together?

Cradling my heavy heart I walk around the hall for a while then leave and take a few turns around the town visiting many of the shops and places that I used to; not much has changed.

Later I return to the fair and after buying a small knitted Christmas stocking decoration from ‘our’ stall I claim an anonymous corner to stand and think.

Has today been worth the journey?

 Yes without doubt I believe it has. I did not come here looking to lay any ghosts; just as well as I didn’t find any. What I did find, much to my comfort now I think about it, is that the past is still somehow available in the memories and the echoes that are all around us.

They can be seen and heard and more importantly felt if that is what you want at a given moment; available to be ‘tapped into’ especially should you return to where they first had life and were known as the present.

Should I return, even if years pass, they’ll still be here just as bright and real as the memories on her stall.

 Wherever we were together the echoes of what was live on, to be ‘listened’ to again or maybe just remembered. Elaine is still alive to me in them but I must learn now that standing still and ‘listening’ for too long will not help me to move forwards in life.                                                                                Elaine can no longer move but I have to or the unchangeable past will overwhelm my present time, take it over if I let it; and should that happen I will become the victim having forged my love into the bullet and Elaine would not easily forgive me.

“You’re going to have to move on Mark, in everything I mean. You’ll have to be strong, or you won’t be able to live.”

Her words in the hospice coming back to me.

Driving back that afternoon I think on how it’s nearly two years since I lost her. There will be no more fairs together just undying echoes of the ones that were. I’m trying to be grateful for what we did have rather than be bitter for what wasn’t, but must admit that it is not always easy to do so.

Somehow I must now learn to trust and loosen my foot off the brakes; trust that there is a road ahead for me to travel even though I cannot see it too well.

It might not be clear but at least I’m pretty sure now that it is there waiting for me to begin a new adventure.  Allowing myself to do so is now the difficult part.  

Continued:-

It’s a short walk up the road to the car. All okay, no parking ticket so that’s good. I hang around a little just to breathe the air and munch some crisps from a bag in the shopping I’ve on-board from nearly five hours earlier.

Time to go back, but I take the cut through rather than return past the Harbour Hospital. In a few minutes I’m in the pharmacy at Poole.

I sit down and wait, not too hopefully as some of the people waiting were here when I left twenty minutes ago or more. But, after about fifteen minutes Marilyn’s name is called and I collect her drugs; then re-trace my steps to A&E.

It’s very crowded here now. The inner receptionist leaves the safety of her desk and screen to work the keypad allowing me back to bay 4 and Marilyn.

“Busy night?” I say to her as she presses the buttons.

“Always busy nights here” comes the weary reply.

She holds the door for me and I glance back at all the people behind us. It’s a complete cross section of society, old, young, affluent and not so, all here with one common purpose to get help for themselves or a loved one.

There’s been talk of closing this place down, of moving it all to Bournemouth Hospital some miles away, across roads regularly choked with traffic. I can only assume that those proposing this idea have never spent any time in A&E or had to witness a loved one of their own doing so.

We need more of these places not less, funds should always be available for them. Hope is to be found here for so many, and who has the right to take that away from them. Why do we have to suffer so many bloody fools in authority in this country and see so much money wasted by and on box tickers and pen- pushers holding down lucrative non- jobs?

Deep breath Mark, don’t get wound up it’ll only unsettle Mar’.

I’m soon back at bay 4. Marilyn’s pleased to see me, her heart rate is coming down but it’s still a slow process not aided by her growing tension and anxiety. It’s easy for me to forget that she just is not use to this environment whereas I am well baptised in its pace and procedure’s.

I continue to tell her about the last time Elaine and I were here and the people we came across, and promise to read her Elaine’s blog of that night.

Josh has gone off duty and we have a new consultant though I cannot now remember her name.

We both like her, she is very thorough, in- fact the care here is excellent from everyone we deal with. They don’t rush or shout or get flustered but are very professional and re-assuring at all times; I remember it as being like this on previous occasions though everybody is new to me now.

The bay opposite has a new resident, a lady of late middle age who looks to be in a lot of pain. We assume the rather bored looking man with her is her husband. He looks to have lost a lot of weight recently as his clothes are all loose and baggy. She is doubled over on the bed and wants morphine.

“Just need some details first” chirps the young nurse beside her.

A few mumbled replies come to her questions then she addresses the husband, “Has this happened before?”

“Forever” is the tired reply and he busies himself from then onwards with his phone.

Staff come and go and I guess she got her morphine as later she perks up and behind closed curtains a nurse questions her about recent bowel movements, “ No, not exactly runny but quite wet and a lot of bits in it; I’m not usually like that.”

Marilyn and I look at each other, her face tells me she doesn’t fancy a sandwich right now. A just reward awaits he who invents the soundproof curtain.

Our wait continues.

Mar’s heart rate is consistently lower now but does keep rising again especially as she keeps looking behind her at the monitor.

“Stop looking round you’re winding yourself up.”

“I can’t help it Mark, I’m getting so anxious lying here, and I’m getting worried about you now too.”

“Why?”

“I’m worrying about what being here is doing to you. You went through all this shit with Elaine I can’t ask you to go through it with me too. You ought to go, I could call Simon (son) he may be able to come over.”

“Bollocks, I’m not going anywhere till you’re ready to leave. It doesn’t bother me being here; I might have thought it would but it honestly doesn’t. Elaine’s not waiting here for us or me or whatever, like Kilroy- We Were Here- but now we’re not, just me again, this time with you.”

“I bet she’s laughing Mark- “There, your turn now.”

“If she’s laughing then she’s laughing with us- or holding our hands.”

Mar’ smiles over at me; time passes, the monitor keeps flashing its lottery of numbers.

We are silent for a time and I think of Elaine and that full night we spent right here together, so clear in my mind. I was afraid at first that she was dying, that I was going to lose her, the fear so real to me then. How was I to know it would be realised little more than a year later.

Time passes and the patient becomes more impatient and restless.

She is given more tablets and we are told that the x-ray results have come back all clear.

It’s now just after 8pm and it’s become quite obvious to me that Marilyn’s bpm is going to stay on the high side just because of where she is, so I go in search of nurse Maria and explain asking if the consultant might come and see us again soon.

To my utter amazement she joins us only a few minutes after my return.

She studies the monitor in silence for a short while, then kneels beside the bed on a level with its occupant.

“Yes you can go home now but…..”

There is a list of do’s and don’ts plus she carefully goes through the drugs and the dosage Marilyn is to take. This is all addressed mostly to me as she knows I’m the one to remember it all, not the patient; again a role I’m very familiar with. Then we are free to go.

Mar’s off the bed and into her jumper coat and boots in seconds, afraid I think, that there may be a change of mind. But soon we are re-tracing the route I remember so well to fresh air and freedom.

On our way back Marilyn turns her phone on and there are several messages from worried friends. Going to hospital meant cancelling her afternoon shift at the tiny Oddfellows Arms pub in the centre of Wimborne, and word has got around.

Traffic is light and it’s not long before we are back outside her home; it’s been a long afternoon/evening.

Sitting at the kitchen table I go through the drugs and dosage with her and write it all down. She’s not stupid, but it’s easy to get confused once you’re back home, something else I know only too well. Then I take my leave making her promise to call me later so I know she’s okay.

It’s a short journey of a few minutes back home for me. The cats have been shut in as I had expected to be home hours ago. Rita runs about at the prospect of food whilst Sammy ignores me with lofty distain from the staircase.

They get their supper, and after lighting the wood-burner I crack open a beer and sit close thinking on what this day has brought into my life.

How strange it all seems now I’m home. Co-incidence? – to end up in that same place again; or is there some hidden lesson or message in it all waiting to be found? As I’ve mentioned previously Elaine didn’t believe in co-incidence, but the question now is, do I?

A short time ago Marilyn was fine and dandy, now all this. Is it permanent or is it transitory? A warning shot across the bows maybe? “Time is precious un-buyable, constantly running down and then out; don’t waste it or the opportunities it brings with it.”

Elaine and I always tried to make the most of what we had, what came our way. As time pressed on we came to realise its importance, not a conscious decision perhaps, at least not at first, but intuition maybe, ignored at our loss.

Today I didn’t envisage Elaine in bay 4, it was always Marilyn there, and I honestly had no jitters being back in that place once more. My tears outside the Harbour hospital were spontaneous and genuine at that moment; there is no point in forcing emotion that is not present.

But I don’t regret them nor am I embarrassed by them, though it’s nearly two years since I lost her there is rawness still within me; I know there always will be to some extent. Sometimes I may need to scratch it open again, like you would with a scabbed over cut or burn; you know it does little good but you cannot resist that minute of indulgence.

Is time the healer that they say or is that capability within us all along and the moment just has to be right? 

Today’s echoes of and from my life with Elaine have set me thinking.

So much of ‘us’ was given over to time at hospitals that it became a way of life, but even more was spent at vintage and antique fairs. An idea has been hovering at the edges of my mind for a while now, that is, to return to the place of our last ever fair together- the Cornmarket building Devizes -early 2020.

I’m not sure why, I know Elaine won’t be waiting there. Perhaps I’m picking at that scab again but I have to find out. Maybe future time is not the only healer, maybe past time can do it too.

I do know I’ve be afraid of returning to any of our regular venues; afraid I think of what I may find, find within me that is, not in any actual building itself.

I have already checked online; at present there are no longer any vintage fairs being held at Devizes, but there is going to be a craft fair, on a Saturday, late November; we were always there on a Saturday.

It only takes to the end of my second drink, my minds locked in; I’m going back.

To be continued, soon…

It’s that time of year again and I am not sure if the next post will be out before Christmas so I’d like to take this chance to say once more a big “THANK YOU” to you all.

Thank you for staying with the story as it unfolds; I’m never quite sure where it’s going at any one time but it’s moving; somehow I feel in the right direction.

Believe me when I say that writing this and, knowing there are those out there who wish to read it, with or without comment, has been to me as great a help as any individual has in my life since I lost Elaine.

Nearly two years ago now a faceless horror came into my world. We, Elaine and I, always knew that that horror lurked at the threshold of our happiness, but we came to regard it as part and parcel.

Just something that was there, that one day we understood was going to be able to cross that threshold; and one day it did.

In doing so it instigated its own destruction – stupid bastard, but we knew it would never be capable of destroying ‘us’, and it never did.

This should be a miserable time of year for me but, I’m damned if I’ll let the ‘turkeys get me down’ any more. Elaine would swell with pride at my standing defiant and, laughing along with others rather than folding into darkness and constant tears.

I know in my heart her wish across the void would be that I will not forget her and God may strike the light from my soul if I should ever dare- but life goes on, including mine.

Have the best Christmas you can; I’ll be back soon- my love and thanks to you all…Mark.

This was intended to be a short intro’ to the next blog but, as has happened before, it kind-of galloped away with me so I gave it its head to see where it went. I’m pleased enough with the destination even more so the ride to get there. Somehow I just needed to write this down, hope you don’t mind reading it.

While I was out driving recently I came by a field of horses. The weather was warm bordering hot, even so some had rugs on whilst others didn’t.

I slowed down and remembered.

White fencing tape, oh so familiar to me, was dividing the space into individual quarters and dancing erratically in a compassionate breeze between its supporting poles.

Most of the animals were mooching about heads down scouring the parched earth in the forlorn hope of finding something green hidden in a sea of brown and beige; two were grooming one another on either side of the flapping tape.

A sea of memories washed over and through me but I had to drive on; later at home those memories returned.

I began thinking back to the various stables I’d known with Elaine. There were several different ‘yards’ during our years together but only really the two horses, Teddy and then Bruce.

She loved them both but Bruce had the edge; Elaine needed him in a different way to any other. Despite the known and unknown problems he came with his presence in her life was a light in the darkness that edged around the last eleven years or so that she lived.

When Elaine and I got together full time I soon came to realise that when you have a horse you are signed-up for life, either it’s or yours depending on fate. It’s pointless owning one if you are afraid of hard work or don’t have access to a bucket of money, (possibly both!).

The bills are relentless:- stabling, bedding, feed, farrier and of course- the vet.

“Got a horse? Let’s face it – it’s gonna go lame”; regularly, from what I remember.

Elaine always worked hard to be able to keep this all going and there is no doubt that she, and then we, went without things that we could have easily afforded had she not kept a horse.

Did I ever resent this? Emphatically – NO!

When you love someone so very much you just want them to be happy. The pleasure she gained from her horses by far outweighed the expense involved or the time taken up. Indeed time was a commodity that Elaine did not squander easily; she knew it was not an infinite luxury and spending it with her horse was almost (I hope!) her favourite pastime.

It was inevitable that I would become ‘roped in’ (pun intended) to this horsey world because there were certain things that Elaine could not easily manage alone, due mostly to treatments she had had or was having.

Stuff such as stable repairs or painting, maybe fences too, also hay and feed to haul and stack, poo picking in the fields, you get the picture.

Even so my wife was a little reluctant to get me too heavily involved at first. She knew I didn’t have any great love for horses, they more than often make me sneeze and itch as do most animals, and I have never in my life even sat on a horse and I can honestly say to do so is not on my bucket list.

(Elaine did once suggest that I have a sit on Bruce whilst she led him, but with no steering wheel or effective brakes- no thanks darling!).

But she was happy when I genuinely came to enjoy our visits to the yard, something we did do occasionally together, though not always. Sometimes I would go alone to carry out repairs or deliver hay etc’ and if Bruce was in the vicinity he would usually come over to lend a hoof or mug me for treats or have his ears scratched; much hand washing followed.

Even I must admit there was a certain presence, a certain something about that horse that made him stand out from the herd as it were. He was intelligent with charisma and personality in spades, people just wanted to approach him and be his friend; he soon became the star wherever he was stabled, something his owner was secretly quite proud of.

When well enough and often when not, Elaine would do all the mucking-out and stable care herself and she really liked to be alone to do it. I came to recognise that many owners treat it as a sort of social thing, meeting others over coffee or tea and having a chat etc but that really wasn’t Elaine’s style, certainly not in the latter times anyway.

In her last few years she worked her visits so as to be alone at the yard if possible; she enjoyed the solitude and the opportunity it gave her to think. Nobody’s fool when it came to the cancer situation she understood that the fuse was getting shorter and was  unlikely to be drawn-out far beyond its time.

How exactly her thoughts ran though I can only guess; the big smile was nearly always back in place when she returned home.

I didn’t understand this solitude thing until a few years back when Elaine was on more chemo’ and too unwell to tend to the stable. Help was to hand with fetching Bruce in and out but not for everything else, so I volunteered my services for stable duties.

Elaine was wary, not that she didn’t trust me, but I think she feared it was an imposition and that somehow sorting horse things was her duty alone. Anyway, she showed me what and how, and while she recovered I became stable orderly for a time.

I too chose to go when no one else was likely to be there, mainly to avoid any criticism of my efforts, and then a strange thing- I began to enjoy it, not so much the work itself but just being alone.

Alone yet with the world all around me, there was a unique satisfaction to it. Sun, wind even rain all brought something special to the table as did the open space and immediate silence. It seemed to free-up my mind and gift me the capacity to think clearly if only for an hour or two.

I remember too the smells of nature caught on the frequent breeze and hanging as unspoken thoughts in my mind. This horsey world, now forfeit to me, is something I would love to re-visit again one day but not yet.

It ended completely when Elaine died but it started closing for us both when Bruce died barely four months before her.

Ever since she had him he had suffered with painful bouts of colic (twisting of and blockages in the gut). He was always a right greedy bastard when it came to food, and in the field he would just eat and eat; often he looked as though he’d been inflated via an airline.

Elaine restricted him where possible, which never enhanced his mood, but especially when the grass was wet as he would get problems often resulting in him collapsing to the ground amid lingering groans, eyes distended pleading for help. Mind you, at many of these moments he seemed to make certain that an audience was on hand to bear witness and dispense due sympathy.

My wife had her emergency kit close at all times and often successfully treated him herself though the vet would be summoned on occasions to administer injections and advice. Once he had recovered sufficiently Bruce would be ready for his evening meal and did not much appreciate it being replaced with a bland bran mash for his own good, (he still ate it!).

Elaine always returned to the stables at night if Bruce had one of these turns to check all was okay. I would often go too if it was dark and nobody else was going to be around; a stable yard at night is so different to one in daylight.

The yard described as Old Roman Farm in Elaine’s book was quite a remote and eerie place with several ancient tomb mounds near at hand; it was the first ‘home’ for Bruce with Elaine. The daytime skies were vast and brooding whatever the weather, and the atmosphere particularly at dusk, brought with it an edginess and a slight contempt for all around and beneath it.

I never did like her returning there alone after dark, and although not an easily frightened person, I know she was always grateful when I volunteered to go with her.

Bruce’s final home was about two and a half miles from ours and a busier place with quite a few people living on site. I rarely had a night visit there but for Elaine they started to become more and more frequent.

The end of Bruce’s life came unexpectedly just over 2 years ago on September 10^th 2020.

Two years, it seems longer to me but then time is a bit of a jumble in my world at present, but I can recall that morning only too well.

He’d gone down with colic the previous afternoon. Elaine said she’d sat outside of his stable and was watching him in his field when in her mind she knew something was wrong, he was moving erratically and fidgeting and eventually she fetched him in.

It soon became obvious colic was again the problem, but Elaine wasn’t sure why as the grass was not wet which nearly always acted as the kick-off point.

She treated him and the symptoms eased but not fully and after dinner that night she returned alone to the stables for several hours. When she came back I just knew this time was different, she was quiet and obviously still concerned.

 Elaine knew this horse better than anyone else alive and although she didn’t voice her fears directly to me I felt them none the less and knew also that she felt uneasy leaving him that night.

Next day she left early for the yard.

 I was at home that morning but couldn’t settle to anything. Instinct told me my fears were not unfounded and I decided to call Elaine by 9 o’clock; the phone rang at five minutes to.

“Please come over now.”

“What’s happening?”

“Just come now Mark please.”

Never before had I heard my darling’s voice so small, so lost.

I grabbed boots coat and keys all in one movement and was in the truck before I barely had time to think. Elaine had taken the car as the truck had a broken spring but that was of no matter to me right now.

Two and a half grinding bouncy miles later I arrive, just too late.

Bruce is down in his stable, obviously dead.

I shall never be able to shake the image of my wife kneeling beside him her head and face buried in his neck. She is sobbing fit to burst, the emotion wracking her body like a storm playing with a feather.

The vet, whom Elaine had called very early that morning was left with no choice but to euthanize this magnificent force of nature; it appeared that a section of his gut had effectively died leaving him in great pain and beyond all hope of saving, though they had tried.

It had been Elaine’s unenviable call at the end but she said “Just do it” to save him any more torment. Apparently he went down so fast he almost took the vet with him when she administered the drugs.

I helped my love to her feet and we hugged instinctively; she was desperately trying to stop crying but had just as well tried to stop breathing. I held her close as composure eventually returned; words were superfluous.

After a few minutes she went outside and phone in hand started the process of getting the body removed- ever the practical.

I’m grateful that any others at the yard that morning had the grace and good sense to keep away.

Alone in the stable I said my own goodbyes to the horse who had been such a major part of my life too for the past eleven years. I rubbed his ears as he had always loved and his soft pink nose, still warm.  I can feel that even now.

It was as I went to leave that I saw the green wristband that Anna in the U.S had sent to Elaine with two others and she had attached to Bruce’s headcollar; lying in the bedding it was broken through and I dropped it in my pocket unbeknown to my wife.

I knew then clearly in my mind what I had to do with it, the clarity of it unnerved me at that moment.

 I was to make it whole again and when the time came it would accompany Elaine on her final journey. I remember the fear rising like cold bile as understanding briefly flashed in my mind that I would not be waiting long for that time.

I know now without doubt that I sensed only too well the sands were running low for Elaine and I. Too many things were happening at once with regard to her illness and treatment; I can see it now but know that I desperately didn’t want to see it then.

I know also that Elaine, always previously so pro-active with regard to the cancer, took her eye off the ball in her grief for Bruce.

She thought she’d let him down, that she should have seen what was coming and somehow prevented it. But how?

When logic eventually pushed grief out of the picture cancer had sized its chance and become unstoppable. It would have done so anyway but we might have had a bit more time, the enormity of which will be lost on you who luckily have never stood where we were.

Without words we both knew the situation and naturally and unconsciously started planning.

I’m grateful at the close it was so quick and she looked herself to the end.

And Bruce? Well I miss the old villain still, and I must confess I miss the smells of the hay and the feed and the tack (even sometimes the dung heap!), it all mixed in to make up a complete world now closed to me.

The only thing I don’t miss at present is the solitude; it’s there in spades if I want it but it’s a dead end and like it or not I’m still alive and somehow intend to stay so.

Stating the blindingly obvious I haven’t posted for a while now. Not because I couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t want to, but simply because I could not bring my concentration to bear on it or anything much else for that matter.

In the last blog I stated how I felt inspired by my friend Marilyn’s ability to push on with life following the loss of her husband some eight years ago. I thought this would make it easier for me to do the same and accept the fact that Elaine is not coming back to me.

I may well have thought this but ‘accepting’ has proved somewhat difficult; also I had not reckoned with the ever recurring grief leaping out at damn near every opportunity to bollocks-up a given moment, or sometimes the entire day.

I figured I’d done well in having cleared a lot of Elaine’s personal stuff and was, I thought, fit to tackle the rest (mostly work related) but invisible buffers sprang up and I ground to a complete halt.

As spring turned to summer it seemed that everything required my attention NOW!

Garden to sort, vehicles too, cats to look after, shopping, washing, the house to clean, meals to plan and prepare (when I bothered) items to sort for the Vintage Barn (I’ll explain shortly) plus all the mundane phone calls and emails that constitute modern life to see to; not to mention trying to earn a fucking living to pay the bloody bills that always know where you are hiding.

My world was getting more and more cluttered, but worse still, so was my head. Mentally and often physically I was adrift in a sea of complete inertia with no land in sight.

This peaked one Saturday when, returning home after a shopping trip I flopped down in the lounge, lord of all I surveyed.

 Everything was just as I had left it earlier and I began brooding on all that needed doing. An hour and a half later I’m still sat there wanting to move to get going and do something, any bloody thing, but I just couldn’t the enormity of it all was pushing me under.

“There’s no end to this, stop resisting let it drag you down, smother you- this is your life from now on!”

It was then I gently became aware of something more.

I’m beginning to wallow in it, to enjoy it even, to accept it because that’s the easier option to take, easier than facing up to and taking control of myself and the situation that had arisen around me.

Depression had been lurking at the threshold of my wounded heart for a good while now, and had somehow slipped through disguised as a friend proffering sympathy…cheeky bastard!

Standing up I thought;

Depression!

But was I secretly welcoming it?

Was it again a case of the easier option?

It occurs to me here that most of you reading this know next to nothing about me outside of that written or hinted at in the blog or the book. Perhaps a bit of background would be the polite course right now.

I was born May’58 in Wimborne Dorset, the town I live just outside of at present. I was the youngest of our little family which consisted of Mum and Dad and my elder sister Sue, all sadly long dead now.

I had a happy childhood and although money was tight, Sue and I wanted for nothing and felt safe in the love that our parents wrapped us in.

My later school years coincided with the change from Secondary Modern/Grammar school to so called all- encompassing Comprehensive education.

It was a bit chaotic at the time and it didn’t help that the older generation of teachers, whom we had grown up to respect seemed to a man and woman all be pensioned-off at this moment and their replacements, barely much older than ourselves, somehow thought that being our ‘right-on’ friends was the way forward.

 It wasn’t.

We were used to and indeed thrived, in a more disciplined routine; breakdown was inevitable and swift.

I loved history and art, but the teachers I studied under combined to make these worthy and beautiful subjects downright boring and my enthusiasm waned rapidly.

I left school with some exams under my belt but not really a damn clue of what I wanted or was going to do.

 The easy option was to join the auction firm my dad was with, so I did, for a couple of years, but it was a dead end from the start and I jacked it in and ‘temporarily’ joined a local removals company owned by a family friend.

The temporary bit turned out to last eight years (you get less for murder), and I ended up travelling all over the country and continent. It proved to be an education in its own right and, as anyone who has ever done this job professionally will agree, you see every side of human nature possible; the good, the bad and the downright ugly!

As time passed I would arrive for work and sit with the engine running contemplating just buggering-off again. The job had become something to endure rather than enjoy. It was time for me to move.

Through a friend I met Alan who ran a ‘sort of’ decorating business. I had always been handy with a paintbrush so when offered a job I took it without too much thinking involved; again that easy option.

Turned out Alan’s imagination was bigger than his reality and after four months (much of it spent in the pub) the work dried-up.

I became self- employed and worked a short time for my sister’s partner, then did a year or so with a couple of plasterers. During this time I met Jim who was renovating a house to sell on and needed help.

We got on well together and I did much of the painting required and gradually turned my hand to the other jobs that Jim took on.

One of these jobs was the painting of Elaine’s cottage, I’m guessing most of you know the outcome of that.

Before her first marriage she had been dealing in small antiques and old costume etc, really what is now termed Vintage. She went back to this with items in a friends shop and then started doing local fairs and markets.

Elaine and I finally started living together full time in 1993. Never afraid of work, she did all sorts to pay her way and keep her then horse Teddy.

Trouble was the local venues didn’t pay very well for all the effort involved; she needed to travel further afield, this is where I came in.

She could set-up and sell okay but needed help loading unloading and driving and this now mostly fell to me.

We became a real team doing fairs regularly across London and the south of England. Later we branched out doing house clearance work and eventually Elaine started-up her own fairs.

Of course this meant we spent a huge amount of time in each- others company, forging a bond others could only guess at.

As cancer and treatments came and went we carried on as best we could, the bond between us becoming greater still.

By now I had started going with her on buying trips to collect and load the purchases and encouraged by my wife I started buying myself. It became a game between us as to who could bag the day’s best bargain, and she didn’t always win!

Being self-employed meant I could pretty much take time to help Elaine whenever I wished, so it made sense for me to stay with what I was doing (the right option), it also leant a sense of security for when cancer put Elaine out of action and I could stay home to be with her during treatments, without having to gain permission from an employer.

We had so much fun working side-by-side. It was often hard work but how I miss it now I simply cannot put into words.

 It’s not just my wife I’ve lost but a whole way of living has closed to me forever, the exception (for now) being the vintage barn at Cranborne.

Housed in the garden centre at Cranborne, about ten miles from our home, Elaine was offered selling space in the vintage barn around the time the cancer was declared  terminal, roughly five or six years ago now. Items sell on a commission only basis.

This suited Elaine, as it was somewhere else to sell direct to the public now that we were doing less and less fairs due to her regime of treatments taking their toll on her energy.

She loved it, we frequently travelled over with new items to arrange and squeeze in and she was soon publicising it on social media platforms to gain new customers and followers.

We carried on buying, and plenty of my time was taken up repairing, painting and tarting up…sorry…adding patina to much of what we purchased.

Elaine wanted me to carry on with the barn after her death. She thought it would help in getting me out of the house and meeting people again. It did, well to a point anyway, but it near broke my heart the first few times I went back there; buying at the sales again all but did the bloody same.

The mistake I made these last eighteen months or so, was continuing to buy more things but not facing up to and clearing that which I already had; the harder option put to one side.

The problem was I was fearful, lest parting with this ‘gear’ somehow mean parting again with Elaine and our way of life being lost to me forever. I just wasn’t ready to concede that it was already lost and not coming back.

The easier option was to do next to nothing and try to hold on; not the best decision but, I think forgivable in the circumstances. 

With so many items around the house needing my attention plus everyday living to get through, as I said earlier, depression crept in and I could easily have folded.

 Indeed in many ways I wanted to do just that, the easy option once more, but that Saturday afternoon as I stood I could imagine Elaine’s little hand tucking into mine and I felt her voice whispering into my heart.

“It’s up to you now, you must decide no one else can do it. If it’s all dragging you down then chuck the lot, it isn’t worth the grief…but, if you can work with it and not against there’s money to be found here, and change as well which is the more important thing for you now.

“Pace yourself Mark, each thing accomplished is a triumph, each one a step forward.

“You must not become a victim or it’s won.

“Make the most of the open doors before you; so many we knew together are now closed or closing, holding on is no option embrace the new that comes into your world.

 “I won’t die any the more because of it; don’t be afraid to change.

“You’re here to live and you’ve cause to live for now haven’t you”?

I know she’s right, to be honest it wasn’t often that she was wrong; her belief so very strong in so many things, especially us.

There are a lot of physical items to remove from this house, this home, and from my life. I’ve a whole stack of crates untouched since our last fair together, Christmas 2019 at Devizes.

 Treasures to unearth? (Hope you are still out there and interested Lynne)!

But whatever, the options are now all mine, sink or swim it’s up to me.

Clearing the ground will I know, clear my head and my heart too; what my life from then on becomes will make no difference to ‘us’.

Life with Elaine stopped when despite the odds, we got to the top of the hill together. Then I knocked the truck out of gear and turned out the engine for the last time; she had to get out, and foot off the brake I started coasting downhill alone.

I’ve been coasting ever since but I’m gradually getting slower and slower, I know that at some point in the future I will stop, then I’ll get out, lock the door, pocket the keys, and walk away.

I can’t walk back up the hill to her, she won’t be there anyway; the route for me is straight ahead, and I’ll have to trust my instincts when I encounter the options there will be along the way.

But I’ll not throw away those keys they still represent another option and a life not to be forgotten.

Change is upon me whether I like/want it or not. But to be perfectly honest with you all, I know deep down that I want it to be; that it is the right way.

I’ve allowed myself to be bogged-down long enough, lasting it out will make no bloody difference to that which has occurred, no difference at all.

Is this now the beginning for me? No.

The beginning of the end maybe? I doubt it.

But the end of the beginning? Yes I think so.

Churchill’s words miss- quoted from the darkest of hours.

It’s no longer the darkest for me, but it is not yet full morning either, though the streaks of light passing through the horizon tell me that morning is due soon and inevitable in my life.

However long it takes to reach me is kind-of down to me. Somehow it will come whatever, but I want more than a measure of control, the option to be mine again.

I know that I don’t have to sit around and wait, it’s okay to go forwards and meet it.

I have reason to do so, to live; but being so close I hadn’t seen this coming…..

A friend of Elaine’s (and mine) called unexpectedly on Sunday afternoon to retrieve some DVD’S lent to Elaine just prior to her going into the hospice. We chatted briefly whilst outside in the cold sunshine and it was later, after she left, that I started to think.

Elaine would have been up to Bruce at about that time. The sunshine welcome; the cold expected but tolerated. That bright sun would be the early herald of the coming spring and the summer.

Mucking out the stable in jeans and t-shirt, too hot for a coat; Bruce turned out without a rug. The plentiful grass vibrant green with stored new life.

Somehow these thoughts seem to have passed by me last year, but not now.

Those summer Sunday evenings after she returned home, we sat outside on a bench together. Tea but more likely beer or wine in hand. Easy gentle conversation, sometimes intimate, sometimes hard reality; always inclusive of laughter and hope.

It serves to spell out in capitals that it is not just my wife, my partner, my confidant that I have lost but whole sections of my life are now forfeited; the sun and the seasons will carry-on, but Elaine and I have stopped. The sands of time for us could never be eternal, at least not in this world.

Unseen, hope still sits on the bench beside me.

I’ve lived in this house over 42 years now. My parents were the original leaseholders, a situation inherited by the National Trust when they were bequeathed the estate my home is part of in 1981.

Mum and Dad left in the summer of ’87 when I took over the full lease and lived here alone for the next six years until Elaine moved in mid-1993. We were under this roof together for the next 27 years until her death early 2021.

Some years ago we acquired a property of our own, long since paid for, but we never wanted to go live there. We did look at other places locally with a view to moving, but each and every time cancer reared its ugly face and moving home went onto the backburner, then simply never happened at all. Somehow I think we both knew it never would.

A lot of trees surround this place and it’s a worry when strong winds and storms are forecast as damage due to falling debris is always feared.

 The storms of late January 1990 brought significant damage to the building due to a fallen chimney; and many surrounding trees lost limbs or their very foothold in the earth because of the fury of the elements.  The scaffolding was still around the Lodge when Elaine came here for the first time that summer.

Power cuts and loss of telephone lines are quite a regular aspect of life here due to all the cables having to come through a copse or two next to the church, which is up and behind us (me), then directly through the woods at the rear of the house.

Elaine and I always had torches strategically placed around our home lest the power fail after the descent of darkness and candles plus an oil lamp or two were, and are, always to hand. Also a landline phone that does not require mains power is always in-situ should the phone line survive but the power be lost.

During the first year since Elaine’s death I had only one power failure when the wind took out the local area early one Sunday morning shortly before Christmas.

The weather was mild, I managed alright and all was soon restored back to normal.

Three weeks ago the elements struck again, but with somewhat different consequences.

Two big storms battered the south of England in the same week and I returned home on the Friday afternoon to find no power, no phone-Bugger!

In short, a tree in the copse beside the church had snapped-off about six feet or so from the ground. It took off the tops of two others as it fell, crushed a fence, but more importantly it shattered a telegraph pole and destroyed the cables on it- my cables!

All was eventually reported but there were problems all over the region and I knew this was going to be a long haul.

At least I had the Rayburn working still and the woodburner but everything else is electric and as this house is nearly 150 years old with solid walls and zero insulation it can, and does, get bloody cold especially upstairs at night.

I spent some of that first night at the pub, but even alcohol cannot entirely ward off the dark and cold, and I could not help but wonder what Elaine would be thinking right now faced with days, or even longer, spent like this.

On Saturday morning I took the contents of my freezer and most of the fridge, over to Julie’s house. She kindly lent me the use of her landline and her shower; did some washing for me, charged my mobile and supplied a late breakfast and then delicious lunch. It was a shame to go home but I started back mid-afternoon to get things ready for the nineteenth century to return with the inevitable darkness.

For half of its life this house would only have been lit by candles or oil lamps-no gas here; how the fuck did they see anything much? It’s trying and difficult to read by these means and the fumes soon get me in the throat resulting in a cough to put covid to shame.

I manage to make a balls-up of my evening meal and the mood is not enhanced by room temperature lager, when, sat at the kitchen table in a pool of fumy light the mobile phone rings.

It’s Marilyn, my friend who lives in Wimborne, I saw her yesterday so she knows my situation.

“Everything still the same Mark?”

“Yes, the cats think I’m mad going about with a head-torch on.”

She continues; “Mark you can’t stay there alone in the cold and dark you’ll just be miserable.”

“It’s not too bad downstairs, perhaps I’ll sleep by the woodburner.”

“That’s not going to be comfortable at all and you know it; why don’t you come down here and stay with me?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. Promise to behave yourself though!”

I didn’t take much persuading; “OK I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

I was a bit late getting there but we relaxed with drinks in front of the TV until bed time and it occurred to me then that I’d not done this of a Saturday night since before Elaine had died.

Back home Sunday the loan of a petrol generator from friend Giles at the local forge, brought a spark of civilisation back to me. I could run the fridge for a while, charge my phone and power up one light; but the bastard drank more petrol than I could whisky, and the noise scared the cats- and me- half to death. But I was and am grateful for such kindness.

Monday morning and the phone guy arrives to say they can do nothing until the electric co’ replace the pole and their own cables. That afternoon the electric rep’ declares it to be quite a major job but I’m rewarded for my attitude of; “Fuck it, don’t apologise to me, it’s not your fault a tree fell down, at the end of the day it’s just a power cut”- by them later announcing that I’m to get an emergency generator that night to power the whole house.

It’s up and running just before 11pm, thanks Elaine, I’m back in the 21^st century.

Well almost, no landline still, but some internet as Bob comes over and sets up the emergency hub I’ve been sent. How we rely on all this stuff now!

Anyway all goes fine until late the following Saturday afternoon when whilst being re-fuelled the generator cuts-out. Shit!

The guy tries to start it up to no effect, so he contacts the electric co’ who take my details and say they will try to get an engineer out ASAP. On a Saturday night-sure!

Luckily I’ve hot water ready for a bath, but to say I’m pissed-off with it all by now is a vast understatement.

I try not to do self-pity ( a lesson learned from my wife ) but the prospect of a dark, fumy Saturday night or even longer, sent my spirits and humour to the bottom of the scale.

It’s dinner by oil lamp, but my hearts not in it at all, and a trip outside for firewood confirms glittering frost forming-it’s going to be cold tonight!

Almost on cue from seven days ago the mobile rings and it’s Marilyn again.

“How’s it going Mark?”

“It’s fucking gone! The generator’s packed up!”

I explain my situation in the enriched language she knows to expect from me.

“OK do you want to come and stay with me again?”

“I’d love to, I just need to get out of here tonight.”

“Come down when you’re ready then and bring some beers, I’ve only got wine.”

I notice she hasn’t told me I’m to behave myself this time, but I take it as read none the less.

I settle the cats, who know by now that I’ve gone mad, pack a few things then go out into the darkness and strangely invigorating cold.

I feel a bit like I’m jumping ship but for me darkness coupled with the cold are sometimes too familiar, a bit like old friends you don’t want to meet anymore. It all brings to mind the edge of the void I stood on after I lost Elaine. I know it’s just in my mind but I don’t want to face it down each and every bloody time; right this minute I want warmth, light and trusted company and they are just a short journey away.

I’ve been with Marilyn less than an hour when a call to my phone heralds the arrival of an engineer at home, to examine the silent generator.

“Do you need me to come back?”

“No point mate, you being here makes no difference to my fixing the fucker or not.”

I like this guy.

About 10.30 he calls again.

“All up and running fine now.”

“What was wrong?”

“Idiot fuelled it too quickly, any overflow triggers a safety sensor to avoid fire, just had to reset it and check through.”

I give him my distant thanks, then he’s gone.

Marilyn has overheard our exchange.

“Do you want to go back then Mark?”

“Well I have had a drink, shouldn’t really risk it, much rather stay here with you.”

“That’s fine with me too.”

We sit and watch TV and Marilyn channel-hops for a while then we settle to just talking over our drinks.

Her situation has some strange parallels with my own as she lost her husband Jeff, over seven years ago to cancer. Like Elaine he too died at Forest Holme hospice.

“He was my rock Mark, despite whatever was happening in my life he was always there for me, and I know he always loved me.”

They were together nigh-on fifty years, having one son Simon, who I have known since he was a young child.

Marilyn continues; “Jeff did everything for me, I didn’t have to worry about the house, the bills or finance he sorted it all, but when he died I was thrown in at the deep end and I just had to manage. I know Simon will always help but he has his own life now with Steph and the boys and I was determined not to be reliant on anybody.”

Something tells me to remain silent, she drinks some wine then picks up again.

“Many thought I’d go under after he died, no bloody chance! He would have been so disappointed in me if I had, and the least I could do was not to let him down in this, so I pushed myself on. You see Mark I had to forge a new life for myself, a new way of living that he would be proud of and me too, and I’ve done it. Yes, I’ve had more time than you have as Elaine’s not been gone as long, but she’d want for you as he did for me, to survive, and not just survive the loss, but to flourish in spite of it.”

Despite the highs and lows of fortune in our lives Marilyn and I have retained a friendship through the last four decades, though as I have said before we rarely met of late or even saw each other.

Shortly before she went into Forest Holme Elaine asked me to contact Marilyn and tell her our situation. When I asked her why her reply was quite straightforward.

“Because when this happens you are going to need all the help you can get.”

‘This’ meaning of course her-Elaine’s-own death.

Elaine knew what she was about too as Marilyn is one of a small band of people, without any one of whom, I’m not sure I could have survived the storm that has been my life for the past fourteen or so months.

Sat with her that night I realised that where I’m trying to get to in my life my friend is already there. What I’m writing and talking about she has already achieved. Okay, she’s a head start on me, but she has quietly just gotten on with life; no fanfare no blog or book, only the human spirit determined not to be broken by adverse circumstance and, when faced with staying put or moving forward into life has bravely moved on to see what living still offers; understanding full well that whatever comes her way now, cannot take away anything from that which has already been lived and experienced.

When I got home Sunday morning I made coffee and sat outside listening to the generator humming me out of the dark ages.

The power and phone lines would be up and running again soon enough; a hiccup in my life but then business as usual. The damage of the storm all repaired and forgotten.

But what about the damage done by that other storm, the one that left me alone without my wife?

The repairs are slow and ongoing still, they may never be completed, and even if they are things will never be the same, how could they?

But I’m aware now that carrying on as before is not an option and neither is standing still. I have been treading water for long enough now, talking about letting go/moving forward etc, yet unable or unwilling to take many meaningful steps to do so.

Talking with Marilyn and recognising my own situation reflected in hers I’m feeling fully for the first time since losing Elaine that I have nothing to fear by living.

Whatever happens in my world from now onwards it cannot take away anything from that which has been; my past remains fixed and untarnished by the present and the future.

We spoke that night of Elaine and Jeff without hint of embarrassment or any false humbleness; they could have been in the room there with us. Whether we speak of them or not they are still dead and will stay so. It matters only that they lived and the times we shared with them remain, whatever happens in our lives from now on.

I see through my friend that living, and enjoying doing so is still allowed after loss.

It is perfectly possible to carry the past within, whilst forming a new way of life for yourself; and feeling guilt in doing so, though natural enough, is ultimately unnecessary and a self- inflicted punishment that those whose memory we carry it in would never wish upon us.

As I got up from the bench I shared so often with Elaine I remembered how she never believed in co-incidence.

“There’s always a reason Mark, you just have to find it.”

Was there indeed a reason behind the storm and the broken cables?

A lesson to be brought home thanks to a failed generator and time spent with a close friend.

Strange the hand of fate.

Do you have any rituals in your life that you feel compelled to carry out?

 I don’t mean routines, they’re more in the nature of necessity and I’m not meaning habit here either. What I mean by rituals is the doing of something that is completely unnecessary to living but you carry out anyway, either because of desire, compulsion or perhaps even superstition.

Personally I think many people do have such rituals in their lives, but don’t always want others to know about them; maybe it’s something too private and not for sharing, the reasons for which may not be understood by outsiders.

 Whatever, can there be any harm involved? Possibly not, but what if by tying yourself to carrying through certain actions, if say only once a year, you are actually holding yourself back in some way or binding yourself to something or someone which, or who, has in fact long since moved on and your actions over time have now become a form of lip service.

I’ve mentioned my late friend Ian before. Ian died of cancer in November 1991; at that time Elaine and I had known each other about sixteen months. Though she was still officially with her first husband she attended Ian’s funeral with me, but not the wake.

We met up at my home later that evening and as it was now quite dark we carried out a ritual in Ian’s memory that we continued with, on that same date together, through twenty-nine years.

We let off a rocket (firework) into the night sky and raised our glasses to toast our friend as it briefly lit-up the darkness as he had lit-up so many lives during his short time amongst us.

The trouble was I often had to buy the rockets in pairs or multiples so we had spares and started letting them off in memory of other people, usually on the anniversaries of their deaths. We soon had more night time launches going than NASA could handle and it was getting a bit out of hand.

It was Elaine who said this needed to stop as it was all now becoming a bit morbid and I had to agree, so we just stuck with Ian’s yearly ritual and soon discovered that spare rockets did keep till the following year.

On one of these nights not so long ago, Elaine told me that she did not want me to remember her in this way should she die, or for me to start-up any other forms of ritual remembrance for her.

Seeing my puzzled look she explained that although she never wanted me to forget her she didn’t want me creating artificial ways in which to do it and falling captive to them.

The only special ritual for her was our annual walk by the river.

Every year Elaine and I re-enacted our first ever date together by walking again along the riverbank as we did in July 1990. It took a certain amount of effort for her sometimes, as chemo’ and other treatments took their toll along with the cancer, but we managed as best we could.

We never missed, and I know as she told me, that she hoped I would continue with this yearly walk to remember us.

Last July’s pilgrimage on my own was, I must be honest, one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I just had to do it; and I’ll carry on doing it as long as I can as I know she would want me to.

I realised then too that Ian’s evening ceremony in November would be carried out alone for the first time ever.

When the date came I had two rockets left from the previous year but I bought two larger one’s also as by now a plan was forming in my mind that I somehow knew was going to be the right thing to do albeit the ending of an era for me.

It was Ian’s 30^th anniversary of leaving this life and I thought a fitting time to end this annual salute.

Why? Because I felt it had lived its time, especially as Elaine had always been there before and without her I knew it was just going to emphasize her loss.

It was strange to stand in the darkness of the garden alone. Always before she was beside me but thinking on it now I believe she was really just there for my sake, the original meaning of the evening having long since faded like the light from that first firework.

As two rockets in succession lit the sky for my long past friend I told him they’d be the last and hoped he would understand my reasons.

I felt glad at the decision to stop, like something had lifted, but if it had, then it was a burden of my own making and no one else’s. I’ll never forget Ian he still shines bright in many hearts, brighter than any firework ever could.

I had two rockets left now and they were going to be for Elaine whether she wanted them or not!

I visited her grave at Christmas twice, as I said in the previous blog, then did so again for our wedding anniversary on the 29^th. I went also on the date of her death but had made up my mind that these were not going to become yearly fixtures. As her birthday follows just two days later (7^th Jan’) I felt she would sooner have a visit then rather than my being back and forth over several separate dates in quick succession.

I’d said to Elaine after we had organised her funeral and bought our plots some five years previously, that when/if she died I would place a small Christmas tree on her grave each year.                                   

“What for, I won’t be there to see it?” was her laughing reply, and I now see how right she was.

If she were capable of witnessing a seasonal tree at Christmas, then why not witness the one at home in the lounge as she did when alive, than be stood outside looking at some rain sodden piss-poor shrub on a mound of grass? Logically it makes sense to me now too.

Standing next to where she lies, on her birthday I did feel closer to her, but possibly this is only as expected as her body is there; but that’s just the point it’s her body not the shining spirit that lived within it, that’s moved on. She can be anywhere that I am, the revelation of which came to me on Christmas Day outside the hospice.

There is genuine comfort in this.

As I stood before her there was something else for me to do; I moved my wedding ring to my right hand.

I had sworn to myself when Elaine died that it would stay put on my left hand for at least one year and a day. I couldn’t bear to not wear it at all and there’s no room around my neck on a chain for it, so the other hand is the only choice.

It wasn’t an easy thing to do and it does not mean I love her any the less, or ever will, but it is about my walking forward from here on and not standing still or looking back at that which I have been so lucky to live but which can’t be carried into my future other than as memories.

Later that day, back at the home we shared for nearly three decades I went outside into the late evening darkness at around 7pm.The rain had stopped-thanks Elaine!

The air was cold but encouraging in its refreshing embrace as I set up the improvised launch tube for what I knew would be the last time ever; so many before!

I opened a bottle of the same tap we had had at our wedding some twenty six years before and poured out two fizzing glasses to the brims.

There were two rockets, one large brute the other somewhat smaller.

First to go was the smaller one, and I thought then how it was the last of four, two of which Elaine had witnessed in November 2020 stood by my side.

Was she here now somehow to see this one as it launched with a screech and flare of white and red fire, shot skywards then fell and briefly hugged the landscape before plunging to earth and exploding in an orange ball of flame seemingly far greater that its size should have allowed.

Pungent sulphury smoke filled my nostrils and made me laugh as we had always laughed together, even despite the toughest news, given in consulting rooms and telephone calls over so many years.

Why were my cheeks wet when it wasn’t even raining-thanks Elaine!

I raised a glass and toasted my love, and the life that lives on in memories and yes, that to come also.

Then the second and final rocket was placed in the tube.

I hesitated, looking around me trying to penetrate the darkness, hoping still that somehow Elaine could see this earthly moment.

The lighter flame glowed steady, like a candle at a wake as I ignited the fuse which started burning with a spluttering hiss. Weirdly to me, I felt I’d just lit a light to eternity.

Standing back I took a sip from my glass as bright orangey fire lit up the small world around me and with a fantastic WOOSH!! carried my love skywards to try and find the one whose name is forever engraved upon my soul.

It exploded impossibly high in the world of darkness above me forming a stunning ‘living’ tree of golden stars and streaks of fire that hung for seconds but will shine forever in my years to come.

I knew she was close by and was pleased at my decision for this night and the future.

Stood in the silence it came to mind that this was the deliberate ending of an era by me for me.

I understand clearly now why Elaine didn’t want elaborate or false rituals; they can and do tie you down and hold you to something that is material in its make-up when that which is being remembered is more of the spirit than of this world.

I’ll walk by the river for her and for us each year as often as I am able. I’ll tend her grave and visit when I can, when it feels right to, or maybe on a special date, but not just for the sake of going to stand there and make myself bloody miserable because I falsely think it’s the proper thing to do.

Becoming a slave to ritual remembrance is pointless, it won’t bring Elaine back and I know damn well she wouldn’t want it.

The best way I can honour her is to live and try to do it well. It’s not the easy option as I have to make the effort every day with no fanfare, not just on a few selected dates now and then. Life simply cannot be lived through any sort of lip service.

That night, which would have been Elaine’s 67^th birthday, wrought a change within me. I had to be open to it and it would not be hurried, but the shift has occurred; now to find a direction.

This was originally intended to be part of a more general post but in the end I wanted to keep Christmas Day as compact and complete as possible, so it has become a blog in its own right.

One of the things I had been dreading most was the coming of the first Christmas without Elaine. Though she was in the hospice the previous year at least she was still alive and we were together there; but I feared this Christmas just gone that I would be alone and in darkness, if only metaphorically speaking. At least that’s what I thought would be the case, but I hadn’t reckoned with my wife or the intervention of fate.

Christmas Day 25^th December 2021.

I’m disappointed to wake up to greyness all around. Outside it’s peeing with rain and the wind is relentless, and I had so much hoped for seasonal goodwill from the elements. But my hopes have fallen on stony ground like so much of the proverbial wasted seed.

I have breakfast as Elaine and I always did but sit in the kitchen not the lounge as we used to. Then I open some kindly given presents from my friend Mike, one of which has me blubbing like a kid; they are not my first tears of the day and I know they won’t be my last.

I am late getting out and leave home after 11am. I’ve no real plans, just ideas.

First I drive to the ruined church and Neolithic site of Knowlton where Mike and I went after Elaine’s funeral. Apart from one hardy dog walker, I have the place to myself and I go straight to the two yew trees where I tied the pink wool ‘offering’, almost a year since, in remembrance of my wife.

I cannot find it anywhere. Whether it’s been blown away or simply removed who can say but I’m frustrated and begin to get angry. The awful weather doesn’t help the situation, but then as I stop and look across at the bleak and frigid landscape before me I start to smile and an unheralded warmth begins to calm me from within.

What difference a piece of wool it can be replaced if need be. We don’t need it to stand here side by side and gaze at this feral beauty around us, and you are by my side, aren’t you? I can neither see nor touch you but something inside says you’re here and that’s enough for me.

I leave after about twenty minutes; I’m both wet and cold but I’m glad that I came; something unexpected has come away with me but it still remains invisible to my understanding.

I head for Wimborne stopping off at the woodland burial ground on the way. It’s quite busy, something I selfishly don’t like even so I visit Elaine for the second time in two days. I’m not at all sure what I expected to find. Peace? Comfort in solitude? Whatever, it’s not here and frustration once again starts to gnaw at the ragged edges inside of me.

So I drive into town, park up and walk around for a bit, despite the weather.

 Nothing seems to be panning out as I had thought, but then what did I think? I don’t have any answers but something of that feeling I had at Knowlton is staying with me, it whispers about none of this really mattering.

Back at the car I change my wet through coat for a dry one, and start off for Sandbanks and the sea just outside of Poole.

It’s here that I was working when a few years ago Elaine’s condition became terminal. Neither of us knew how long we had left together and I would take early morning walks along the shoreline before work, lost in thoughts and trailed by ill-hidden fears.

Parking where I used to I take the footpath between houses and flats and rounding the last corner come out above the beach; I’m now exposed to the full un-Christmas-like fury of the elements. The wind is a bastard and the heavy drizzle near horizontal plus it’s bitterly cold.

It seems like the whole world and his wife have come here today too, it’s more crowded than an early summers’ morning. I wanted to be alone to walk in self-indulgent privacy, have these people got no Christmas dinners to go to?

I begin the trudge along the shoreline but in minutes I’m wet through again and frozen to the bone. I imagine Elaine walking by my side:-

“Fuck this for a joke Mark, why the hell are we here? You’re going to catch pneumonia at this rate. Get back to the car for goodness sake”.

I take her ‘advice’ and a short cut, and am soon back dripping in the drivers’ seat. I’m feeling very pissed-off by now, none of this day is going as planned.

“What plans? You said you’d make no plans just take the day as it comes, don’t blame it that it’s what it is; control is yours if that’s what you want”.

I remember I’m not far from Forest Holme hospice where a year ago today I was beside my wife; I decide to drive over.

The traffic is very light and I’m soon on all too familiar territory.

I park away from the hospice and despite the weather walk beside the main road towards the back entrance, a route forever engraved within me.

Then a strange thing. Each Christmas morning for as long as I can remember Elaine and I opened a bottle of fizz, Champagne or sparkling wine depending on our funds! Also our last ‘drink’ together was a sip of Bucks Fizz on our wedding anniversary shortly before she died. And now as I walk up the hill bang in front of me in the middle of the pavement (sidewalk) is a Champagne cork; no other debris is around, just the cork.

I laugh to myself as I pick it up, it brings a wave of memories to me of all those wonderful Christmas mornings we spent with each other.

 “They cannot be expunged by the memory of that one last Christmas, unless you let them”.

I don’t hear the words, but I feel them.

I walk on and through to the back of the hospice and gently open the gate that stands like an old friend in greeting. There’s no one about and I’m tempted to go further until I notice the window of what was Elaine’s room is open. I don’t want to alarm anyone so I re-trace my steps, but I do place the cork up on the gatepost against the wall.

Then I leave by the front car park.

 Passing the main entrance my thoughts’ are of that Monday morning, over a year ago now, when we passed through that doorway together, Elaine and I, for the last time.

I carry on walking to the pavement then turn and unconsciously start to wave; it’s then that I ‘hear’ her inside me- no voice-just feelings as before, but just as loud.

“No need to wave Mark I’m not staying there, I’m right here. You won’t be leaving me there ever again, now I can come with you”.

It wasn’t just the rain running down my face; but in my heart and spirit a light like Edison’s new invention flared-up into my world at last.

She didn’t have to stay this time, now she could walk away with me. It was so obvious Why oh! Why couldn’t I see it before?

I put out my right hand as though holding hers and start away, I’m smiling broadly through the rain and tears, this feels so right. I hesitate after a few yards, “Don’t look back, there’s nothing of us there now, I’m beside you and I know you know it’s true”.

So I keep walking straight on and back to the car where I sit dripping again and think on what’s just happened to and within me.

I feel like a man who’s just discovered a new element, something that’s always been there but remained unseen before.

Elaine isn’t in a hole in the earth at the burial ground that’s just her body, a focus to mourn, but it’s not her or any of us.

She’s not at the hospice either nor is she pacing the boards at the Lodge waiting for me to return home. She is I realise now, wherever I am especially when I think of her.

I remember saying to her once that if she died I would not ever be able to leave this home we shared together for so long, as it would be akin to leaving her behind.

Her reply: “Sod that I’m not waiting here, I’ll be coming with you”.

She is in my heart and soul and my memories, Christmas or otherwise; and she always will be. I don’t need special occasions or places to remember our love I see that now. She’s beside me as I think of her, right here right now, always will be.

Brushing away the tears and rain I see it’s almost 2pm. There’s nowhere else for me to go except home. It looks like the rest of the day I’ll spend alone, I’ve had offers but I just don’t fancy walking in halfway through someone else’s Christmas.

So I head back for Wimborne and as there is little or no traffic I’m soon at the town.

It’s now that fate takes a more direct hand in my day.

I mentioned in an earlier blog my friend of forty years, Marilyn. I had an invite to spend Christmas with her and her son and his family; I’d said I might come over later in the day depending how I felt, but I’m cold and wet now and I know me well enough that after I get home and warm again I’ll be reluctant to go out and impose myself on others.

I come to the mini-roundabout where it’s quickest for me to turn left but intuition overcomes habit and I carry straight on. Why the hell have I come this way it’s longer?

But it’s about to get longer still when instead of going straight through town intuition asserts itself again and I simply know I must turn right. I don’t understand why, there’s no traffic to avoid, no reason.

But suddenly there is. As I near the end of the road there’s a lone figure, bags and umbrella in hand, bent against the elements-Marilyn!

I draw alongside her and she looks up in surprise then recognition and hurries round to the passenger door.

“Mark, God am I glad to see you, I’m getting wet through and my boots seem to have a leak; where are you going?”

“Home after I’ve dropped you, I assume you’re going to Simons?”

“Yes, yes I am, but why did you come round this way?”

“I’ve no real idea other than I had to.”

It’s weird, a few moments one way or another, and I would have missed her completely.

It transpired she had woken-up late not feeling too good and wanted to take a Covid test. By the time she got her hands on one, did it, and waited for the result, then got ready to go out she was running quite late all round.

I drive her to her son’s home about half a mile or so away.

“Mark the offers still there if you’d like to join us, Simon would love to see you.”

“I’d like to see him too, but I’m cold and wet and need to be home for a while, but I’d like to come up later (I could feel Elaine urging me) though I don’t want to walk in halfway through your meal.”

“That’s okay I’ll text you when we’re done.”

And so I returned about 4pm and stayed until 10.30 that night.

I had a really great time and was made to feel so welcome. It was completely different to any Christmas I’d known in a long while, but the lesson began to sink in that Christmas is what you make it, as I guess life is too.

The wonderful festive times I shared with my wife are not coming around again; but they will live on in memories as long as I do. What is important is that they existed in the first place.

Christmas for me from now on will be different, not necessarily better or worse than before, just different; this past one has helped me to accept that.

Question is, can I now accept that all of my life will be ‘different’ from that which I knew with Elaine?

Only time will tell.