It was always difficult to judge what would make a welcome gift for Elaine. That’s not to say she was demanding in any way, far from it, but she had definite likes and dislikes that were not always so easy to guess, and, as her birthday followed Christmas by just two weeks I was always on the look-out for present ideas throughout the year.
Early one summer she returned home after a trip to Marlborough with a friend when I asked if she’d seen or bought anything she liked; she told me about a shoulder bag she had seen and fallen in love with.
It was petrol-blue leather with chrome fittings and a front flap with a zip at a 45 degree angle.
“Why didn’t you buy it?”
“It was £160.00.”
“So?”
“It’s too much Mark, I can’t justify it, but it was nice.”
Here was an opportunity too good to let pass.
Some tactful questioning got me the whereabouts of the shop and I knew an illicit trip to Marlborough was needed.
At the time I was working about 15 miles from home, so left fairly early in the morning; when Elaine went off to a boot sale even earlier one day I left soon after, and as the place where I was working was empty anyway I knew I had time to do the 100 miles plus to Marlborough and back OK, without being missed for a couple of hours.
I arrived about 8.15am, bought a parking ticket for the centre of town then checked out the shop.
Shit! they didn’t open until 10am, but I was here now so I just had to wait, and buy another bloody ticket!
10am and I’m through the shop door. The woman there seemed rather surprised and a bit ‘needled’ to have a customer so early. I explained what I had come for as she silently eyed me with ill-concealed suspicion.
Judging by the stock and prices asked, I guess she didn’t get many customers in paint spotted clothes and wearing miss-laced steel toecap boots.
“Would this be the one?” she said through her nose, whilst producing a vibrant blue bag that even I immediately liked.
“Or there is a LESS expensive version.”(She’d obviously taken my dress code on-board).
Without waiting for an answer she went in search of the ‘cheaper bag’.
I couldn’t see anything cheap in the entire place.
Back she came with a smaller version which was about £50 less, but I knew the one I was holding was what I had come for and said so.
We walked over to the counter.
“And HOW will you be paying?”
I so much wanted to say by cheque just to piss her off but I’d brought cash as I did not want Elaine to see any record of it as Christmas was still six months away.
The transaction done, I was impressed to see the bag sealed in its own white cotton cover before it all went into a very posh carrier bag with an indecipherable logo on it.
We said our goodbyes and back in the car I realised that she never once called me sir, or anything else, but what the hell I had a real gem of a present for my wife.
The bag was smuggled to Mike and lived in his spare room, away from Elaine’s prying eyes and fingers.
In the event I decided to save it for her birthday as she never expected too much then as she reckoned on the best pressies being for Christmas.
“It’s not much I’m afraid darling.”
I say this as I hand her three small parcels on the morning of her birthday. She’s sitting-up in bed, I’ve made some tea but she is yet to get up; waiting long for presents was not her forte`.
“That’s OK Mark, it’s just nice to have something to open.”
The three are duly dealt with and she is genuinely pleased enough.
I walk away from the bed, then stop, “Oh bugger, there is something else, I’d forgotten.”
She’s no fool and knows this is a game and there is something special to come.
I fetch the wrapped bag from the wardrobe and hand it over. She looks at it then up at me. I can’t help smiling.
This is her cue to attack the paper which reveals the carrier bag- she doesn’t recognise the logo.
The white cotton cover fools her and she frowns quizzically until she opens it up and sees that vibrant blue.
It was and is, simply the best £160.00 I ever have or ever will spend. Elaine was ecstatic and lost for words. She hugged the bag, then me, then both of us together. She then confessed that she had deeply regretted not buying it that day as she loved it so much.
Of course, I have to tell her how and when I got it and I think she loved the story as much as the bag. She told everybody.
That blue bag went everywhere with her for years. It went to the USA, to Europe and all over this country again and again, she rarely travelled far without it.
It got worn and faded, but I think she loved it even the more.
She carried it with her when she went to the hospice, and it was hanging on the bed beside her as she died.
I brought it back home later that day.
All of Solomon’s riches could not buy it from me…
Like Scrooge, this year I’d be happy to leave Christmas alone; but I know damn well it won’t be leaving me alone that easily.
Elaine and I always enjoyed our Christmases together. In later years it was just the two of us, which we loved; we had lots of fun and made it all so very special for each other.
Last year was all but lost to us due to her escalating illness, but this will be the first in thirty years for me, without Elaine. To say it’s going to be difficult is the understatement of the century.
Previously she went into the hospice four days before Christmas, and died after being there for just over two weeks.
So she was there for Christmas Eve and the day itself and our 25th anniversary four days later. Then New Year followed, and her death barely five days on from that which was just two days before what would have been her 66th birthday.
This is emotional overload openly lying in wait.
I can see the Bear-Pit yawning in the fairy lights, but can I stop myself from walking straight up to and into it?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to punish myself for any reason, I’m about done with the hair shirt; but the upset is coming, sure as Christmas, whether I want it or not. But I’m thinking now is this the key to it? Is this a crucible I must pass through, to endure or overcome somehow so as not to have to face the same overload situation every Christmas?
Just where the hell the last 12 months have gone? I don’t know. After Elaine’s death and funeral time all but stopped for me. I felt there were lead weights around my legs and I was dragging them through molasses.
Taking up the blog gave me an unexpected focus and it was I believe one of the biggest things in helping me to cope (another Elaine influence?) But this Christmas has come on so fast I am going to have to become a bit of a time traveller to survive it.
I’m going to be back and forth between our past, last year and the present, and I believe it’s going to be the only way for me to face all of this. Head on.
Kind friends have offered to share their Christmas with me and I am ever grateful for the invites, (I was even offered a holiday home in Cornwall, thanks Sara, but it’s a bit too far); but I know this Christmas I must do here mostly on my own.
The ‘presence’ of last Christmas has to be laid, and it has to be done this year.
I don’t know how many Christmases are left to me, but I want in future years to be able to honour and enjoy the spirit of the season as Elaine and I always did. Last year I witnessed how they still manage to do this in a hospice of all places, and if it can be done there by staff and patients alike, then there is no excuse for me… after this year that is.
I want too to remember all the joy that Elaine and I had together over three decades without the heartache. We managed it despite bloody cancer so often trying to break us down, but it never succeeded not even at the last, and I’m damned if I’m going to let the bastard get me from beyond the grave, so to speak.
I know fully well that this is how Elaine would think too.
Her prediction that it would be worse for me left behind to carry on living than for her, as she only had to die, has proved pretty well true to date; but I am feeling recovery around the edges and getting through and out of the other side of this Christmas, and its aftermath, will for me be a big step forward into that recovery zone (if I live that long!).
0nce January 5th gets here there will be no more ‘firsts’.
Every anniversary will have been before and I can breathe out a little easier.
What will I do on the day itself? Well truth is I don’t know. I’m making no plans, I’ll check out the weather and how I feel and take it from there.
Perhaps I’ll see friends later in the day, but if I were to be sat around a table with others early on I would not really be there.
In my mind, I would be with Elaine.
So I’ll travel back to Christmas past and re-live.
I may go over to the hospice just to be briefly closer to last year. I wouldn’t go in, even if they’d let me. I’d just sit in the car or walk around and remember.
This all sounds a bit like the hair shirt again I know, and to an extent it is; but this time I’ll be choosing where and when I wear it, and for how long. I’ll be doing this for me, not Elaine.
She would say just go and be with others, “I’m not at the bloody hospice, any more than I’m waiting at the burial ground”, and I know it; but this Christmas is for me, not for her.
I must do it my way now or that last Christmas at the hospice will be ever present and get stronger each year, I know it will; the ghost of that Christmas past has to be laid for me now, or never at all.
It’s got to be my terms from now onwards, and I don’t mean this just for Christmas either.
I know full well that part of me never left the room that my wife and I shared for the last six days of her life, and I’m not sure I’ll ever fully be able to leave it; or even if I want to.
The intensity of those days and nights is eternally burned into my soul. No words that I write here could convey even a fraction of it to you; live it as I did only then will you be capable of any understanding.
I dearly hope you remain ever ignorant.
Wherever I go come Christmas that blue bag is going with me. I don’t need it to remember, I need its presence just this once so I can live on through any Christmases yet to come and not be a constant time traveller every year.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
My heartfelt best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you all. The fact that I am writing this is fully due to your support.
Thank You…Mark.
PS. Thursday 6th January ’22 falls between the anniversary of Elaine’s passing and what would have been her 67th birthday, I’ll be sharing a very short personal indulgence that day -hope you understand.
A funny thing happened to me recently on my way into the kitchen. When I say funny I mean that in the sense of its strangeness, not its humour.
It was early one evening, I’d had a shower popped on a t-shirt and some sweat pants and came downstairs. Sometime previously I had left a knife on the kitchen table.
It was a prep’ knife, very sharp and pointy.
I don’t know why it was on the table and not the little worktop but it was, and it was lying kind of the wrong way around, so that when I walked from the hallway into the kitchen and casually picked it up in my right hand I lifted it up and close to me; in doing this the blade was level with and a few inches from my chest.
Please understand that I was, as far as I remember, not at that moment in a morbid frame of mind (nor was I half pissed)! I don’t really know what I was thinking and though Elaine is constantly on my mind I was fairly cheerful and generally okay.
But as I lifted the knife and its blade came up, the thought burst into my head with absolute crystal clarity “Why don’t you just push it through your heart?”
I stopped and stood contemplating what was happening.
The point was now just a couple of inches from my heart, which strangely I could see faintly beating through my shirt, as if to leave no doubt as to the availability of the target. I stood still.
I’d not had any real serious self-destructive thoughts since that bloody awful ‘Black Night’ I spoke of in the blog-One Good Day.
That night’s threat was so very real and solid that I have believed since it occurred that I would recognise it if it came again, but this situation pounced out of the blue just as that one had.
Nevertheless what shocked me the most was that in the few moments after this idea struck me I realised I was actually contemplating it; somehow it was presenting itself as a reasonable solution worthy of consideration at the very least, or a good plan as it were, that would be best acted upon now.
I didn’t drop the knife like it was the treacherous Asp but walked forward and placed it in the sink, then I leaned back against the Rayburn thinking on what had just happened. The Judas here wasn’t the knife itself it was the impulse from within me, exactly as it was before, but why had it occurred?
I can fully understand the night of the 30th of January, it was still the month of her death and not long after her funeral but we’re ten months on from that, how much longer will I have to be wary of this sudden impulse jumping out on me? I thought I was doing quite well but I admit to being shocked and a bit fearful at the clarity of it. What if it caught me really off guard, a bit drunk or melancholy and depressed?
Luckily for me (I guess) I’m not prone to be an impulsive person, I’m more of an over-thinker if anything, and the wave of this latest impulse broke against a wall that’s been quietly building up around the harbour of my reason for some time now; but if that wave were taller or me lower?
I glanced again at the knife in the sink and the words of so many months ago came back to me, “It would be so easy”.
How many people I thought, had been seduced by this phrase; whose minds or reason were just then out of balance enough and had acted on the same sudden impulse that I had encountered.
How many have sought to dissolve away their fears and grief by acting on it only perhaps to feel or recognise their mistake a moment after it’s too late.
Some years ago Elaine and I had discussed the possibility of my suicide (there I’ve managed to say it) in the event of her death. Though we talked fairly often about her possible demise we only ever had the one conversation concerning my following her should she go first, as was we knew, most likely.
I’ve always really been of the opinion that it is not right to destroy your own life, except possibly in the most dire or extreme of circumstances or possibly to save another, but she and I were so close that neither of us ever wanted to be apart from the other for too long.
The ongoing cancer had forged us closer together, but I’m damn sure it never intended to, and the idea of my living without Elaine held little appeal for me, and though I know Elaine did not fear death I believe she did, for many years, fear us being parted.
We talked openly, as we nearly always did, and we both found a certain appeal in the thought of us going together, but I know that she wasn’t keen on being the cause of my own self-destruction or my losing out on life or happiness that may be due to me.
We decided against.
One reason being if there is some controlling force in another dimension or life, then it may not allow us any togetherness if I were to murder myself to jump the queue, so to speak.
Also we came to the conclusion that life is so short and precious that handing back the gift after so many years is akin to eating half the choc’s in a given box then returning the others to the giver saying you don’t want the rest thank you.
It would be a slap in the face when many try so hard to stay alive, and so many others try so hard to help them.
I poured myself a beer and walking through to the lounge sat down by the wood-burner where two cats were doing a good job of absorbing most of the heat. Watching their carefree slumbers I acknowledged my gratitude for their presence and this started me thinking about the living rather than the dead.
For such a long time I have been thinking that I must carry on living for the sake of the dead, particularly my wife sister and late best friend. It’s been the thing to say that I am going to carry-on for their sakes, but what about those still alive whose support over this last year has been invaluable to me? And what about me myself?
A small but tight-knit group has been mainly responsible for my getting this far since Elaine died in January.
When she went every day was much the same- bloody awful! There wasn’t much difference between one day and the next; I had entered a limbo land that shared little with the life that I knew. I was numb, but not comfortably so, I guess it’s a form of shock and I went through the motions of living because I had to.
Then, after the funeral reality reared its ugly face and I fell off a cliff and into a darkness that up until then I never knew existed. Everything was cold dark and miserable. A half-light dominated most days and the night seemed to rush in pushing out late afternoon far too quickly in its haste to assert its seasonal authority over the light.
I got out of the house whenever I could but with the lockdown in force and crap weather there were not many places to go anyway and once out I feared returning and being alone at home yet again.
All round it was a no-win situation and when I think back now it still fills me with a hopeless dread. I fear it’s all going to sneak back up and cast total despair over me like the net of a Retiarius and drag me back down.
But official stuff still had to be gotten through and my first key players now came into their own. Julie, Mike and Bob rallied round and their support was invaluable. Being the time of the second lockdown Mike soon became nigh-on my sole visitor and when he wasn’t here he phoned, wary of how I was or what I was (or was not) doing, or might do.
Others played their parts to:-
Cake and beer left in the woodbin by Judy, followed by a text to tell me where to look.
Our special friend Paula who called round despite the lockdown (we kept a distance) and then gave me a beautiful wirework Lark that she made in memory of Elaine, and which has pride of place hanging in the front porch.
Sara, whose early visits and constant texts reminded me so much of a world of love outside of my grim reality.
Penny, who is the very embodiment of the loving mindfulness she teaches.
Anna, in the States, whose help, encouragement, friendship and love has been beyond price.
Kathy, whose counselling and friendship is a gift from the Gods.
Each day was a challenge to get through. Waking without Elaine was the start of the real nightmare (should that be daymare?) and so many times I wanted to say “Fuck it all” and give up but Elaine would not allow that; so people would make contact one way or another and somehow I’d drag my sorry ass through the next 24 hours.
Of all the days and nights the worst bastard was Saturday night.
Elaine and I had given-up doing Sunday lunch years ago. We did go to my Mum’s for a while and I will never forget the time we were about to sit down when the phone rang. Without a thought Mum, well into her 70’s, said “Oh who the fuck’s that now”. Elaine’s face was just perfect as I tried not to laugh; she said afterwards that she had never heard anyone’s mum say that word before. They always got on well together and even better after that.
But we began to get very busy on Sundays and Elaine liked to try and ride her horse then too, so Saturday night’s meal became a sort of special one for us; and after her death I tried to keep this tradition alive. But I wasn’t too successful.
It seemed so futile sat there without her; it just served to amplify the emptiness. Sat there alone I knew I was unlikely to see anybody till at least Monday at the earliest. Sunday might bring some phone calls as Mike or Julie would often ring then; also my friend Graham, now living in Spain, would regularly call as did Elaine’s Cousin Jeff and wife Mary from the USA.
All these people and others were there for me but those Saturday evenings dragged like a long walk to the gallows.
The ‘Black Night’ referred to earlier was a Saturday night and the fear of its recurrence was ever present for a while and though Mike and Julie and a couple of others had said to just call if you feel the need to, I foolishly could not bring myself to admit defeat at the hands of solitude and loneliness, but I could feel it wearing me down.
I began dreading the weekends and Saturday night in particular.
One Saturday evening, I was sitting feigning interest in the TV when the phone rang.
The words of Mum came back to me “Oh who the fucks that” but I answered and heard a long familiar and never forgotten voice say “Mark? Hi it’s me, Marilyn.”
Marilyn and I have known one another and been friends for some forty years.
Though we rarely saw each other in recent times, unless by chance encounter, the friendship remained alive despite the passing of the years. She had learned from a mutual friend what had happened to Elaine and having got my number from said friend had been deliberating over whether to phone me or not until her son said “Oh for goodness sake just call him” so she did and was I ever bloody grateful to hear her voice that Saturday night.
Elaine and Marilyn had met on a number of occasions but did not know each other too well, so it was nice to talk about my wife with someone who had no pre-conceived ideas about her. It was also nice to learn about Marilyn’s friends most of whom were then unknown to me.
The point I’m trying to put across, is that talking with someone I knew but had not been around for so long acted like a real tonic to me; the passage of time lent a new element to our conversation and the minutes sped by.
I’ve never asked Marilyn why she chose to call on a Saturday night. Though she would normally be working until late evening this was during lockdown so she could have called at any time, I’m just so glad she chose as she did. Now we talk and meet regularly.
So many synchronicity moments like this have occurred. So many things and people falling into place at just the right time that I am left more than thinking, is there is some form of deliberate intervention going on here?
I spoke of things falling in the right order immediately after Elaine died, and the same is happening now, she would fully understand the danger in the loneliness and the silence and seek somehow to re-dress it.
Elaine always set great store by her friends and liked to maintain contacts; I tend to be a more solitary person and can easily let contacts lapse. I realise now this is not a good thing to do given my present situation.
I remain deeply indebted to all those who have not forgotten me. Whether it has been a text, email, phone call or visit, once or a dozen times, thank you all.
You’ve helped me to keep going, push back against the dark and the fear and allowed me to find the last thing left in the box-hope!
Elaine would love you all all the more for it, as do I.
But then I know you are all being gently manoeuvred by my wife she never could resist interfering- sorry, being pro-active, thank God.
Not a deliberate act, I hasten to add. It lived in one of the woodbins behind the house. I was filling the bin then let go of the lid just as I noticed the large black spider that’s been living in it for a while was sat on the top edge.
I grabbed for the lid but-“Too late Ethel”- it fell and crushed her. Lifting the lid, the still twitching, but ruined body fell to the concrete and the sole of my boot was employed to administer mercy, and finish that which I had inadvertently started.
I felt sorry, but not ashamed in any way as it was a complete act of chance; or was it?
Was the spider’s time up no matter what I did and if so had it made a difference in any way by its living in the first place?
I recently dreamed vividly of Elaine; I knew that I was dreaming but she was there large as life. We talked and I asked her why she had to go. She simply replied “It was time” and looked very sad as she said it.
After my sister Sue died I had a similar dream. We were talking on a street full of people and I said to her “I wish you hadn’t had to go”. To which she replied “So do I” with that same sadness. Then she turned and walked away and I was aware that I could not follow.
This blog shares similar ground with the last one-“Seconds”. That ground is time and what or when anyone decides ‘it’ or it’s duration.
Every living thing, be it spiders or humans, will eventually lose that ability to live. Death comes to all and we tend to perceive our lives as a long or short duration of time; but what if it’s the events in a life that matter most not the span of time it covers?
My great friend Ian died of cancer some 30 years ago in 1991. This was also the year of Elaine’s first cancer too.
When he died I was deeply upset and complained to Elaine that his was too short a life, his time cut off somehow.
“Try to look at it as a life complete”, was her reply.
“He’d done all he was meant to, duration might not come into it at all”.
It’s true that Ian (or big G as we called him) touched many many lives in his short one. He was one of those larger-than- life characters who could make lasting friendships in a hovel or a palace. The fact is 30 years after his passing he is still talked of and remembered with humour and affection. To those who knew and loved him he will never be fully gone.
His life made a difference, but what about that of the spider?
I, of course, believe that Elaine died too early but was hers a life completed also? Her life criss-crossed and intertwined with so many others and then in later years she began to touch a lot of lives with her writings and observations of what is under all our noses, if only we would bother to stop look and listen.
Living with the constant shadow of early death sharpens the senses-even if it is not your own death that threatens- I can fully attest to that.
Elaine uncovered joy and wonder in the strangest of places, even spiders webs, but how many of us healthy ones just pass on by, oblivious to the miracles surrounding us?
And life is a miracle I defy you to say or think otherwise. Just stop as she did and wonder at the beauty and the cruelty of it all.
A couple of years or so back I came home and locking-up the car I noticed a small spindly fly dangling, caught in a cobweb. It was desperately trying to free itself to no effect. Without intervention it would die, its time over, but did that matter?
For whatever reason I decided I was going to be that intervention.
It wasn’t a housefly just a little creature that seemed no more than a few hairs stuck together, so I pulled out part of the web plus the fly and laid it all in my hand. It seemed to sense a new chance and renewed its efforts to be free of the net.
I carefully dragged away some of the strands but its limbs and wings were so frail that I feared of dismembering it, but still it struggled for its life refusing to give up. By now I was wondering why I had started this, it would be easier for me to just call it a day and swiftly end the fly’s distress, but I admired its spirit and sheer will to live so decided to finish what I had begun.
I clicked open my pocket knife and carefully pulled and cut at the web against the palm of my hand.
It took some twenty minutes of our combined efforts but then suddenly it was free and flew upwards; I almost heard a cry of joy.
Then the strangest thing of all.
With no lie, it flew round in front of me, circled my head twice and seemingly hovered for a few seconds before my eyes, then it was gone.
I felt a strange elation, how stupid, just a little fly.
I related the story to Elaine when she got home, “It was thanking you” she said.
“But it was just a bandy little fly” I replied, “What real difference does it make when millions probably die in a day?
“Made a difference to that one didn’t it” she said. “And maybe it’ll make a difference somewhere else, and so on”.
“I don’t really see what difference that thing could make anywhere. It may even be dead by now”.
She was silent for a few moments, but her reply still makes me think to this day. “Maybe the difference was not for it, maybe it was meant for you. Perhaps your act of compassion, the loss of twenty minutes from your life has saved you somehow, some accident or injury possibly, you’ll never really know; but tell me do you feel like you wasted your time Mark, do you feel foolish”?
“No, I don’t”, was my truthful reply.
“Then it was the right thing to do regardless of where the difference lies, or with whom”.
It didn’t occur to me then but I’m wondering now how did that fly perceive me?
Was I part of its world, or was I something so huge and alien that even though we share the same space it had no real conception of my ‘being’? Yet its weird actions when freed say different.
A couple of months back I was sat outside in the evening drinking a beer -and memories with it; both cats were with me as they used to be when Elaine and I sat there together. I casually noticed a large group of gnats flying round and round in a sphere they had formed about the size of a football.
They just kept on spinning in their own mad little universe seemingly oblivious to all else; I’m certain they had no consciousness of me watching from only a few feet away. I could so easily have interfered in their world, but why would I? I just watched, fascinated by the urgency and skill of their gyrations.
Did those gnats, all long dead now, have a concept of time hence their frenzy, their lives lived at a faster rate of completion to our own? Did they understand limited time better than we do, and what difference, if any, did they make by existing in the first place?
Are we those gnats to something so much vaster than us that we have little or no consciousness of our being watched as we spin round and round? Something that could, but rarely does, intervene in our lives; or do we know that intervention and label it luck or fate or chance?
Strange I’ve never really thought along these lines before; before Elaine died that is.
I keep wondering where is she? And I don’t mean the burial ground!
I more than half-hoped she would ‘visit’ somehow if only in my dreams, but it hasn’t really happened, at least not to the extent or way that I had wanted.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to carry on or move on if she were still ever present in my life in a 100% way. I can’t think that she is here constantly, if she is then what’s the point in her dying in the first place?
Was Elaine’s life/work complete? When is that decision made if it’s made at all, and by whom? And has she made a difference by her living?
I’ve asked a lot of questions I know, but it’s all so raw and unreal that I’ve no real answers to suggest. Death and dying throw out the ‘What’s and Whys’ but any potential answers are really unprovable beliefs belonging to the individual.
There is no proof of continuance after we die that can be held aloft to public satisfaction and approval.
But belief persists.
Though why should we continue on and not the spider or the fly? They too are of this world and just as dead to it when they ‘pass’.
Sisters-in-law, who should have caught later trains.
Whilst I have your attention, if you’ve not all fallen asleep by now, I would just like to say a big thank you to all who tuned-in to the Horse Husband and Cancer book launch live on-line a couple of weeks back. We all thought that it went very well and like to think that Elaine would be pleased too.
My greatest thanks must go to Anna and Crissi who have done so much, especially on the night itself. They I know are used to this sort of situation and they undoubtedly carried me along with their professionalism and belief in the book itself, I remain ever grateful.
It’s funny but that sort of thing, appearing live and reading to the world (my own words some of it too) would normally have seen me a bundle of nerves days beforehand and most likely making a ‘balls’ on the night itself.
But I was strangely calm and not flustered at all and felt confident in myself; I hope that came across OK.
Mike watched the video and said he’d now seen a side of me he never knew existed in all these years- so did I!
I reckon it was the red wine and more than a single measure of my wife.
My thanks also to Julie and John for the use of their Wi-Fi and their larder! (John was the cook – Julie the technician).
Please do give your comments on the book, especially reviews online. Please do buy and read it in the first place!
We really do so much want to get Elaine’s story of her fight for her right to live as she wanted out into the world at large. If you read this work and believe it should reach a wider audience and you have contacts or ideas that may achieve this then please do try your best.
This is not said for myself, but for one whose existence burned bright in the lives of so many others and actually did I believe make a difference; and who I and many believe deserves to be remembered far beyond her years among us.
I’ll write again soon, and try not to ask so many bloody questions, -but- if any of you have any answers…
A Horse A Husband and Cancer is available in paperback and ebook at all online booksellers includiding: Amazon, The Book Depository, and Barnes and Noble. Or ask your indie bookstore to order it.
Lilith House Press is thrilled to present Elaine’s irreverent memoir is here at last. Published posthumously, hers was a life lived with unique humor and remarkable passion. Join Mark and Crissi and Anna for live reading and Q&A from listeners.
Starting at Noon Mountain Time this Saturday, October 2nd. London time is 7pm Saturday.
Our cover reveal! The memoir will be available very soon!
This is not a book about horses; nor is it a book about husbands and it is certainly not a book solely about cancer.
Though that condition is the core reason for this work it does not make this some sort of self-help book for those suffering from this illness or yet another set of pages condoning positive thinking and attitudes to try to overcome despair and fear.
This book leads you through one woman’s fight to stay a step ahead of the silent assassin within. Elaine dug deep within to find her allies and always refused any hint of sympathy from others.
Her deep-seated and dark sense of humour, her even deeper love for me and for her friends and horses helped her to prevail, against the odds, for so long. She was bruised and battered in mind, spirit and body so many times, yet a two fingered salute was all the ground she would give to the cancer.
If you have an interest in horses, husbands or cancer there is something here for you to chew over; but if you want to hear of the unrelenting human spirit even knowing the fight is unwinnable, then read on, there is a feast before you.
What’s the most important measure of time? Days, years, decades maybe; perhaps hours or minutes? I think its smaller still, I think its seconds.
I could get anal here and go into hundredths or thousandths of a second, the world of grand prix drivers etc, but let’s stick with something familiar to us all and just as easily overlooked in its importance.
Seconds, sometimes the difference between life and death, what could be more important than that?
We were on our way home, Elaine and I, from one of our regular jaunts up to Kempton Park antiques fair on the outskirts of London. It’s only a few minutes off the end of the M3 motorway and our total journey there and back was about 180 miles.
Almost all motorway and dual carriageway we would complete it as fast as was possible at the time.
Nearing home the dual road becomes four lanes as two blend left for Bournemouth and two head straight on; our route. A slip road joins from the left, a roundabout slows the traffic a mile or so ahead.
We were bowling along at about 60 mph in our pick-up truck, an articulated lorry moved into our lane in the distance, I noticed a row of cars had been in front of him and assumed he was overtaking.
Elaine spoke and I turned to her in reply, at that second the lorry must have braked HARD, our radio drowning out the sound of his actions; I had no way of knowing that all in front of him had stopped. Glancing back up I saw his brake lights and he was stationary dead in front of us.
I thought my foot must surely snap the brake pedal as I slammed down hard directly onto it; there was nothing else to do, a barrier on our right, cars now to our left.
I still have that pick-up truck it’s now twenty three years old, Elaine loved it. It was battered and bruised by the time she died but driving it for her was giving the finger to the whole world of shiny new vehicles designed for off-road or commerce, that never see an angry puddle or a bale of hay or two in the back.
To this day I don’t understand how we stopped. We were doing at least 60mph when I braked; the truck is bog standard, no ABS to assist. We came to a halt a flies’ dick width from the lorry trailer in a cloud of smoking brakes and tyres, the screeching ringing in our ears.
The seatbelts held us, even so Elaine narrowly missed the dash. I was so shocked I could not even swear; Elaine calm as ever remarked,” Good brakes then, on this truck”.
“Guess-so” was about all I could mumble between numb lips.
Those few seconds of inattention on my part could have changed the course of our lives, we may not have died but could so easily have been injured, what would our future have been like then?
In the hospice Elaine died as I held her hand; but which second was the difference between life and death at that moment? She was in there two weeks prior to that happening, but what or even who, determined the second of her passing from this life that we know and understand?
Would a few seconds more for her have mattered that much?
The whole concept of time has been bothering me for some-time now (no pun intended)! How could we possibly live our lives without it?
Think it over for a minute, or a second; how would we exist without time?
The measure of time regulates our lives twenty four hours a day, every day until we die, but is it anywhere else other than here? If Elaine now exists in some other world is there any such thing as time there?
She was sure we had lived together before in the past and would do so again in the future. But what happens if I live another twenty or thirty years here without her, will she still be waiting or have ‘moved-on’ to start another life and I’m left behind?
This meandering on about time may seem a bit weird to some of you but when you lose someone that you love so much all this stuff becomes bloody important in your mind.
Welcome to my world of fretting and worrying about time; the truth is that since she died I am feeling every second that I live; I can only liken it to being aware of every breath that you take. Time is dragging for me, eight months feels like eight years; though I’m busy working and trying to look after the house, garden, cats, vintage barn and myself, not necessarily in that order, I am feeling every second that passes through my life.
And yet too there seems so little time to do things in, I suppose that’s because I’m now the only one left to do it all. The more I think of it though the more I’m becoming convinced that if there are other worlds or dimensions if you like, after death then time as we know it has no place there at all.
It might be that for Elaine we are only apart for seconds whereas for me it could be years or more. It’s a thought that keeps coming back to me, just hope that I’m right – I think!
The grief is still very much with me alive and kicking out at regular intervals and trying to catch me off guard (often succeeding); though I am learning to absorb the blows a bit better.
Recently I have been working via email, with friend and author Anna Blake in the USA to get Elaine’s book in order and ready for publication. Elaine had requested that in the event of her death Anna should have a copy of all her writings including those done for her book; this was so that Anna could finish the book for her if she died before completing it.
As it happens, Elaine did complete it (unbeknown to me) but it was not written in chronological order so there has been a lot of sorting out and editing to do for Anna, myself and others (mostly them!). It is now completed so the book, titled after her blog, A Horse, A Husband and Cancer, will hopefully be available soon.
Anna told me out of the blue, awhile back, that it had been decided to include the first thirteen blogs that I wrote after Elaine’s death as a means of completing the book, so it is now a sort of joint effort between my wife and myself (mostly her of course). Needless to say that I am deeply and genuinely touched at this unexpected decision and as I also have gotten to write the introduction I feel very honoured indeed.
I did however make one BIG mistake.
When I received the first draft copy, I read it through over a series of evenings noting corrections etc to be made as I went along; then when I finished Elaine’s writing and got to mine I took a break for a shower and freshen-up meaning to read a little more that night and complete it later.
Sitting down with a drink I thought I’d read on slightly further but ended up reading right through to the end, all thirteen blogs worth in one go.
Oh God I had not considered their combined impact, I was taken completely by surprise, and I’m the one who wrote it! Always before I had worked on and read them through one at a time, read together they were like a massive punch to the guts; a BIG punch.
In seconds I was back there in time; that last awful night at home together, the hospice, last Christmas, our anniversary, her gradual decline- and then her death. I was back there re-living it all. It was like watching a film with myself in it and being the director also; I was in floods of tears and torment long before I finished but I could not stop reading.
I went to bed that night crying and I was crying when I woke up the next morning-TRUE!
Time stopped for me that evening; just seconds was all it took and I was back there re-living it all again, the months between totally erased.
Time may well be a great healer, but it’s an easily missed path in the darkness.
There is also the concept of ‘moving-on’ in my own good time, so to speak. People seem to like to voice their opinions on this matter but everyone has a different idea on just when this should be.
More than one thought it should occur fairly soon after Elaine’s funeral, others think in months; some years.
Just of late I have been lucky that kind friends of the present, and from the past, have invited me out for meals, drinks, days out and to see bands etc; but this all takes a bit of getting used to as it seems so weird my being out without Elaine there too.
It feels almost disrespectful or adulterous even in some way; like more time should go by before new adventures happen.
I try to think what Elaine would say to me though to be honest I reckon that I already know the answer:-
“Get out and enjoy, every second counts you won’t get them again; don’t use me or our love as a reason to die slowly alone. The guilt is of your own making Mark, not mine. I’m just as dead to your world now as I was that Tuesday morning. Remember my words ‘I’ll leave you to carry on living for me – make sure it’s good”.
I know this is what I’ve really got to do, but it’s a bit like snakes n’ ladders.
There’s that big green snake on ‘99’ and just when I think I’m doing ok and going to hit ‘100’ something happens and I land on the bastard again and go tumbling down once more, (though maybe not so far each time).
So perhaps after all it is just a matter of time moving at its own pace and I have to go with the flow and find my own level, make my own rules.
The seconds that make up our lives, our ‘time’, maybe they only exist in our minds so we can cope with the living. Possibly that split second between life and death spells not just the end of our time but of time itself.
As I’ve mentioned before Elaine loved Christmas and the presents as much as anyone else. This Christmas however things were a little subdued as we were informed earlier in the year that the cancer was ‘out’ in her system and was now officially viewed as a terminal illness.
There was no timescale but we hoped for at least five years.
When we had finished present opening this particular year Elaine looked at me rather guiltily and said there was one more gift from her to me, she then passed me a small wrapped box.
It contained a thin gold rectangle, pierced with a ring for a chain, engraved on both sides. On one side the words:-“TIL DEATH DO US PART…” and on the reverse “IS FOR QUITTERS.”
I don’t remember now if this phrase is one she thought up herself or if it comes from elsewhere, but I do know she had used it before in her writings.
She explained that this Christmas was a first for us as the illness was now officially terminal and as she wasn’t sure if it might be the last, she wanted me to have this token so I would have no doubt of how she felt about us, even in death.
It has been around my neck ever since that day, sharing a chain with my mother’s gold cross and a gold bunny that was Elaine’s.
At the Woodland Burial Ground gravestones are not allowed but bronze marker plaques are, you can have whatever you want engraved on them. Elaine never specified any words for hers but when asked I knew straight away what to put; so along with her name and dates it reads;
“TIL DEATH DO US PART…IS FOR QUITTERS.”
I know she would love the gesture and the link of the words between us.
12th June 2021.
As some of you will no doubt have figured out, the story that it fell to me to complete over the past few months is coming to a close; in fact this is going to be the last Horse Husband and Cancer post- for the immediate future at least.
Let me explain.
I set out to complete Elaine’s story as I was sure it’s what she would have wanted and done herself if she could. I also wanted to do it to help myself, if possible, to make sense of and try to come to terms with, what was happening in my life. I think I’ve just about got there with both aims.
The simple fact is I cannot keep on ‘flogging a dead wife’, (yes, she would have loved that phrase!). Her story is complete, the funeral was almost five months ago, its’ time to call a halt.
For me the reality of everyday living has set back in. Death ceded me the time to think, remember and write the blogs but life returning is now colonizing that time for other purposes.
Before Elaine’s death I was half of a partnership and we sorted all the mundane jobs of life between us, but now they are all down to me alone; on top of this I have to work as fresh air doesn’t pay the bills. My time for writing is becoming very limited. Anna says there is never time to write so write anyway, and I do understand what she means, but I have another reason to want to stop for now.
I have simply been dealing with death for too bloody long. All but our first year together I have been living with the possibility of losing Elaine to cancer. Death was ever present in our lives; like a mad relative who comes to stay then remains shut-up in the attic, you could almost forget them except for the footsteps above in the dead of night and you remain fearful lest they find the way down and discover you.
During our last five years the hospital appointments and visits intensified greatly, treatment was on an almost continuous basis, believe me it all sharpens the mind towards the most likely outcome.
Elaine and I tried not to let this dominate our lives, and I think we managed very well, but its damn-near impossible to blank it all the time.
Death could not be evicted from our attic, it was there to stay and we both knew it. I for one tried not to acknowledge our squatter. I know towards the end Elaine had ventured up the stairs in her own mind, and I think had made a sort of peace; not a written agreement you understand, just a handshake and nod.
This is only my impression, she never said too much to me, but I knew her better than any alive and sometimes with Elaine you had to ‘listen’ to what she didn’t say.
At first after her death I felt guilty for still being alive and not going with her, irrational maybe, but it’s true. Now I feel not so much guilty for being left behind but embarrassed that I actually want to live. The self- preservation in me wants to go on, see what’s round the corner etc; but can this only be done without Elaine?
It dawned on me a while back that clinging on to the raft of my wife’s death would not save me from drowning. I have to let go and go with the flow and hopefully find my way to the shore. This bothered me though as I did not want to let go or move-on, however you want to term it.
I haven’t stopped loving Elaine just because she’s dead so how do I ‘leave’ her behind?
Then I looked more carefully at the situation and saw a way around my predicament. It’s her death that I have to let go of, there’s nothing saying I’ve to let go of her life, or our time together.
Elaine made life fun, not just something to be gotten through, and I don’t want to leave all that we were at the door of moving-on; nor do I want to lock all the memories away just too occasionally wallow in them on a wet Sunday afternoon or late at night after drinking too much.
I think the best parallel is that of an oyster and a pearl.
The irritant gets into the oyster which can’t be rid of it, so it coats it with fluid forming a pearl and learns to live around it.
My relationship with, and love for Elaine is what I must learn to live around; to carry it inside me always but not let it stop me from living the life that is left to me. I will never forget what we were/are to each other, she is far too important to me for that to happen, but she would not want to be the reason for my being ever miserable.
Elaine would be the first to say: “For God’s sake and mine, get on with life and live it. Don’t you dare use me as an excuse to sit and mope and vegetate, don’t waste it, its’ too bloody precious, just remember me, I’ll always be with you- and I’ll wait.”
She was ever sure that we would be together again and that’s something I will be holding on to.
Over the last few weeks I have, with help, cleared out and disposed of a lot of Elaine’s personal and professional items. There’s lots more to go but I’m not rushing, it will all get done in good time, but not everything is going.
I will be keeping some of my/her favourite things for the rest of my life. I don’t need them to remember but I want their physical presence anyway, just to have something of her to touch and hold when re-assurance is needed.
I refuse to let Elaine become the ‘Elephant in the Room’ the one we don’t talk of as she’s dead. Despite what she endured she was full of life and I want that feeling of her alive to continue whenever those that love her meet together again.
Writing about her death and re-living snippets of our times has brought to me an unexpected appreciation of why writing meant so much to Elaine. I understand now her enthusiasm for words and the sharing of them with others.
Many a time she would be up early in the morning having woken with some item or article mapped out in her head and she would just have to “get it down now!” lest memory should fail her. She cherished the interaction with her readers and I know now why.
The support and encouragement from so many of you over the past months has meant a huge amount to me, and I believe it has and is, helping me to face up to and live through this ordeal.
Dying isn’t that difficult, it’s the staying alive that’s tough, and it’s going to be the challenge of my lifetime to continue doing so without the woman I love, but I’ll have to be up to it as she will be so disappointed if I’m not. She always did say it was going to be worse for me, left behind, than it would be for her and I reckon she was right.
One of the hardest things is doing something for the first time since she died, remembering that the last time she was still here, talking, breathing, joking- or telling me off!
I guess life is a series of firsts and lasts for us all. We know well enough when something happens or is done for the first time, but we never can be totally certain when a last time will be; sometimes they are even one and the same.
As life continues I am ticking things off the list as it were, though the one I’m dreading most will be the first Christmas without her. The memory of the last one remains like a loaded gun at my head. I’ll see it through but be so glad when it’s over and that first becomes a last.
I said at the start of this post that it is the last one for the immediate future; it was originally to be the end, full stop and goodnight, but I have discovered great pleasure in the writing and so many of you have been kind enough to say that you enjoy it to. So I will continue to post in the future but only when and if I feel I’ve something to write that’s worth troubling your eyes to read.
I see little point in a continuous ‘woe- is-me’ dialogue; I do not have a monopoly on grief and I don’t want to give the impression that I think myself the only person on earth to have recently suffered loss and bad luck. Indeed, I don’t regard myself as unlucky at all.
Against all the odds Elaine and I managed thirty years together, the last twenty five of them happily married and always in love with each other. Some couples stay together for convenience, many don’t even get the years we did, of course we wanted more but I’m just so grateful now for what we did share.
I remain deeply indebted to fate, God, the universe, call it who or what you want, that thirty one years ago this summer I went to help paint a cottage just outside of Wimborne, and on the second day heard three word’s that were to change my life forever:-
Can the memory of one good day keep you going, or maybe the thought of one more yet to come keep you alive?
Elaine and I were together for thirty years, that’s approximately 10,957 individual days; most of which will remain unremembered. Though each day is different those that we regard as unremarkable tend to fade into the background, whilst others for whatever reason, leap to the front of memory.
Of course the reason may not always be a good one, but let’s just stay with the good ones for now.
I think among the best of times are those shared with others. Our trip to Egypt with dear friend Terry; adventures in America with Elaine’s cousin Jeff and wife Mary (special memories there!); plus European and UK visits with Julie and John, so many good ‘gigs’.
Closer to home our visits to Goodwood, especially the Revival, are among the best; Elaine Mike and myself went several times together. Sometimes we met others there including Elaine’s brother Colin and wife Soraya. We always had fun and Elaine would often have deliveries to make to stallholders who had bought items from her online shops.
My wife revelled in the vintage costume etc and needed no excuse to dress-up. She once was in the final best dressed 10 women there one day; but helping a fellow contestant who had drunk too much and fallen over did not really aid her chances to win.
They were good days that are fun to look back on and remember. Sadly continued cancer treatment meant Elaine became tired easily and all the walking round was too much, so she stopped going some years ago.
Mike and I continued but always enjoyed coming home to tell her all about our day, her interest was genuine; that won’t be happening again now, perhaps that’s a reason to remember other good days.
Wednesday 20th January 2021. Mid- morning.
I’ve been sat staring into nothing for two hours or more now. Yesterday we buried my wife so: “Today is the first day of rest of your life”-well you know where you can bloody stick that. The funeral’s over, Mike’s gone home, I’m here alone-alone just me-this is it from now on, you realise that don’t you.
My heart’s turned into a brick, everything around me feels threatening and black.
The phone breaks the spell, the noise like a dagger in the ether; reluctantly I move to answer.
“Yes, hello.”
“Hello we are calling to inform you of suspicious activity on your Amazon account, you now need to..”
I hang-up cursing them, why don’t these bastards get cancer and die? Why do they flourish? Why did my wife have to go?
Quite how I spent the rest of this day is lost to me, a wasted day is a shame, but I can’t help that; I now seem to be spending freely.
Thursday 21st.
I decide to visit the Vintage Barn at Cranborne. Elaine went into the Barn a few years ago as we were doing less and less fairs. Though the garden centre is open the Barn is still subject to lockdown, but I need to see how things are out there. On the way I visit Elaine.
It’s all a bit boggy, the earth is in place once more and a temporary marker carrying her name is in situ’. Bunnies or deer have eaten my roses leaving just the stems, but I don’t mind, that happens at home too.
I feel like an outsider visiting an attraction he hasn’t seen before and finding it a bit of an anti-climax, I don’t stay to long.
Neither do I stay long at the Barn. The staff are sympathetic and supportive but when I unlock the door and go in I am simply overwhelmed; Elaine is everywhere. She loved it here, the buying and arranging and selling of these mini ‘treasures’, which are still just as she left them, it was such a big part of her world. I lock-up after just a few seconds and sit in the truck lost, and fighting back the tears.
On my way home I stop off at Knowlton (see last blog).
It had a deep effect on me when Mike and I came here after the funeral; the yew trees with their offerings and memories particularly so. Today I’ve brought a memory of my own to leave.
In Elaine’s work room I hunted around for some simple marker that she would recognise and found it in a ball of vibrant pink wool. It’s a colour she loved and often used in her knitting and crochet.
A couple of dog walkers take no notice as I make my way around the ruined church to the yews. Unlike last time todays weather is dry and clear; windy yes, but the big sky seems higher somehow and the horizon a distant suggestion.
The breeze between the yews is uplifting and full of sound. The ribbons and other items hanging here appear to dance and sway to their own pulse, this may be a site from pre-history but there is life in this place.
Cutting a length of wool I carefully choose a small branch on my right to attach it to; I want it to billow out over the fence in the direction of the Barn, and it does just that. I can’t explain why but I feel close to Elaine right here, closer than I did by her grave. Why this is I don’t know, but maybe there’s more than just life here, maybe there is understanding as well.
I stay for a while breathing it in and talking to my wife, then I return home.
The next week passes quickly; despite the funeral being a sort of watershed there are still a lot of things to get through but I also spend time just sitting unable to cope with too much in a single day. The first blog ‘Carrying-On’ posted on Thursday 28th announcing Elaine’s death and giving our words from the funeral. It also states that I am going to finish the story as it were, so no pressure there!
I’ve also become aware of something else. My emotions and temperament are frayed and unpredictable. The grief is hitting me from all sides, wearing me down, gnawing constantly and I can’t shake myself clear of it.
This misery comes into its own on the night of the 30th of January, a Saturday (really early Sunday morning). I wrote on the calendar the next day- Black Night.
Those two words sum it up the best. For a long time now, particularly since her funeral I’ve felt darkness all around me, quietly positioning itself on the edge of my reason- waiting.
Tonight it makes its move.
It’s 12.15am and I’m going to bed. I turn out the kitchen light and reach for the familiar switch for the landing, but get instead the hall light above me; it has a yellow glow not altogether pleasant without other light, as I go to correct my mistake I stop dead.
I can’t move.
I am engulfed in a tidal wave of utter complete misery and hopeless wretched despair.
I’m shaking, sweat is forming on the backs of my hands, but I’m not hot. Then I start to cry.
No gentle blubber now, it is an agonised flood that physically rocks me forcing me to sit on the metal trunk by the side of the staircase.
That first blog was called ‘Carrying-On’ but I can see no point now in doing so; all I can see is years of desolation before me, and feeling like this.
“She’s dead Mark, dead, and she isn’t coming back to you not now not ever. You’ll never see her again, never hold her close, love her, support her, you’ll never hear her say ‘I love you’ once more, it’s all fucking gone forever, your life together is over- you might as well go too.”
Go?
“Yes Go, you’ve got the means, have you got the will?”
You mean death, kill myself.
“Why not? What’s the bastard point in hanging on here alone, because you are alone aren’t you? Oh people call or text but that’ll soon dry up and anyway they’re not the ones here alone at the end of the day are they? But you are and it’s empty here without her, there’s no point to anything now, GO.”
We discussed this once but decided it wasn’t right.
“You could be with her if there is some other life; if there isn’t then at least this agony will be finished; you won’t even hear the shot and it’s done or there’s the cancer med’s morphine the lot, still there in the larder, no one’s going to find you here in time.”
I’m sat shaking and rocking, tears and sweat soaking into the carpet before me. This can’t be happening am I going mad? A breakdown maybe, what did they use to call it ‘A Nervous Breakdown’ that was it, this must be it what else is there?
I am afraid, frightened of what now is seeming rational. All around me appears black.
“It would be so simple Mark then it’s all over, no more pain no more darkness. She can’t come to you- go to her; you’ve known others who’ve done it – John, Mark, Jimmy.”
But she has come to me, there’s been this strange synchronicity happening in what I’ve had to deal with, and in the silence, she was there and at Knowlton…
“Bollocks- you’re on your bloody own from now on, years of loss and grief it won’t lessen how can it, GO.”
But what if there is something else? What if for some cause I’d done this years ago, then found myself in a room with projector and screen? Then a film had started and I was shown my life that was meant to be.
Elaine, who was going to be my wife and we were to have three decades together; love, happiness, good days, each brushing away the cobwebs of doubt and despair from the other, support; life at its best- shared.
What would have happened to her if I wasn’t there?
“But she’s not here now is she? No more good days.”
Good days? Good day? What was it Mike said to me something about a day? Why can’t I remember?
I can’t stop the tears and the despair is absolute; this vile ‘conversation’ is like a tug-of-war and my reason and life are the rope; I am afraid to move scared of what I’ll do, if I do.
“It would be so easy.”
What was it Mike said, the day after the funeral, and before then, something about a day I must remember? This has to end, it’s got to end. Why is it so fucking dark in here?
“It will be so easy.”
Easy?
It’s as if that word occurred for the first time. Easy? When did Elaine and I ever do Easy?
All those years of struggle. Yes there were good times, many of them, and there was shite too heaps of it to shovel, but we did it together the two of us, a team for each other.
Fuck-all was ‘Easy’ but we found those gems of life in all the muck and held on to them even when the darkness threatened, we never gave up right to the end. To hell with ‘Easy’.
“But it’s all over and you’re stuck here alone- NO MORE GOOD DAYS.”
Good days? Good day! One good day, that’s what he said, Mike, that’s what he told me.
We were talking about it-suicide-a young girl, local, she killed herself- I think his niece knew her, he said: “I can understand it if you just can’t see the possibility of one good day left in your life. If it’s so bad that there’s just no hope then maybe it’s right, but what if?”
“If you can just bring yourself to believe that there is a chance of another good day ahead then surely it’s worth hanging on for; a day when the memories are still there but not quite at the forefront anymore , where they don’t dominate the moment and you can enjoy the day again. It might be fleeting but if it’s there once it’ll be there again and again, that has to be worth something it must.”
I stand without thinking and hit the landing light switch. Instantly I’m bathed in light from six 50 watt bulbs.
Whether it’s the light or the recollection of Mike’s words or the combination, a massive flood of relief engulfs me; I’m still shaking but the tears have stopped, the atmosphere around me feels cleansed.
Was this Rock-Bottom? I had no clue or warning that grief possessed such power, such presence; this has been a terrifying but also an eye-opening experience.
I’ve tasted grief before, on more than one occasion, but never had a banquet like tonight’s placed before me; I’m feeling angry and a bit sick.
If I’d had the gun in my hand or the open morphine bottle, there is a damn good chance you would not be reading this now. I realise that this isn’t some evil crept in from outside unobserved, it is all entirely from within, of my own creation.
After this night I would never out of hand condemn those whose grief overwhelms their judgment and their reason, and I also understand why people die of broken hearts.
Elaine fought so long, so hard to hold on to life, and although I am basted in grief, that is not excuse enough to end my own.
She wasn’t afraid of death so I must not be afraid of life.
There has to be at least One Good Day out there somewhere, all I’ve got to do is find it!
At heart Elaine was a true romantic and she was particularly in love with the Pre-Raphaelite times and works of Victorian Britain.
The idea of billowing, flowing romance; of rhymeless poetry penned in meagre garrets by ailing consumptives, and exquisite artworks created on canvas by renegade artists; thumbing their noses at convention and society, while all the time craving the patronage of both.
She lapped it up whenever and wherever she could.
When she moved in with me she brought along her collection of Victorian prints and drawings, which she then spent three hours one Sunday evening nailing round the walls of her new kitchen. They stretched floor to ceiling covering every inch, but I loved them too.
One of her favourite places was the Russell Coates Museum and Gallery in Bournemouth where much of this period of artwork is displayed. Before we met, she told me, she would often go there alone to look and dream.
We went together just once and I was aware that this was a new intimacy between us. This sharing of her special place with me was very important to her, almost akin to new lovers baring their nakedness for the first time.
This love of the romantic extended into the scene for her ideal funeral.
A windswept hillside churchyard. The sky black a thunderstorm raging; torrential rain.
The coffin being borne aloft by men in black frock coats and top hats.
The priest in front, leading the way across the slippery ground; the wind trying to strip him of his vestments. The followers behind, drenched to the skin.
At the graveside the earth boggy and sodden. As the coffin is lowered the rain and wind washes the tears from the mourners’ down-turned faces; the flowers they’ve brought, now useless be-draggled offerings, like weeds at a wedding.
Elaine would have loved this to have been her funeral- lucky for us it wasn’t.
Tuesday 19th January 2021.
Mike and I arrive at the Woodland Burial Ground just before midday, we are early which is what I want and we are both feeling nervous and on edge. My friend is worried about me and how the next hour or so is going to go, though he has said nothing I know him well enough by now.
The truth is, now we are here I feel a little detached from this morning; it’s as though I’m here to watch a short play that I don’t really want to see let alone be a part of, I’ll just be glad when we reach the end.
Last night I spent alone at home, tonight Mike is staying with me as Elaine had wanted. I’ll be more than glad to have his company, he’ll have the sofa as his bed where I spent last night and was visited by the silence, (see previous blog).
After I woke this morning I went for a walk in the half light up through the park where Elaine used to go after Bruce died and where we often walked together. Much to their disgust I shut the cats in as I wanted just my own company this time and they do so love to go for a stroll, all our cats have.
To this day I am not entirely sure I was alone but the walk did me good, and I feel a renewed strength to face this morning, something in the weirdness of last night has bolstered me up too; is her funeral the ‘peak’ and afterwards is it a gentle slope downwards to normality? Questions without answers at present but they’ll come soon enough.
On my way back I collect a stone from the track to go into her grave; I will also put in some earth from our garden which she loved so much.
It’s just after 12 o’clock as the first of the invited mourners start to arrive. They turn up slowly which gives me time to say hellos to most of them. The mood is subdued, Elaine didn’t want happy- clappy anyway, and she’s not going to get it today. The weather is brooding, grey, a bit cold and unpredictable, the wind fresh and getting stronger; she may yet get her Dickensian burial scene.
A grey hearse silently arrives bringing my wife to the party, whose invite she has steadfastly declined for the past thirty years. My emotions are subdued and strangely neutral.
I’m very relieved when Jane, who is to conduct the service, arrives. Now I can relax a little, we are in good hands.
Everyone stands around talking quietly, all reluctant to be the first to go in and sit; but once a few do, all follow. Mike and I are among the last.
Again the coffin, now set on trestles, looks unusually large; on it rests a spray of nine long-stemmed dark red roses from me. Elaine requested that everyone bring along some flowers to go into her grave with her and all have done so.
I don’t intend to give a blow by blow account of the service here; Elaine had mapped out what she wanted some time ago and we stuck 95% to her wishes.
There was music by: Leonard Cohen, Ellie Goulding and Johnny Cash & June Carter. Readings from, Nicholas Evans, Nancy Wood and Winnie the Pooh!
Elaine’s words were read followed shortly by my own that she never got to read or hear; Jane did a masterful job of weaving it all together, and as she read my words aloud I knew in my heart that I had to carry-on the blog. Anna had given a ‘thumbs-up’ to my idea of continuing it, to tell Elaine’s story to the end, now there is no going back.
As the indoor bit came to an end we sat waiting to follow on as the coffin was taken by hearse to the graveside. The weather was closing in and I wondered if Elaine was planning a soaking for us all at the eleventh hour; but it did hold off, just.
I’d asked that my roses be taken off the coffin and placed on the earth after her burial. Thankfully someone was thoughtful enough to take one bloom and leave it on the coffin lid, a gesture I will ever be grateful for.
There were further readings by Jane and then my darling was gently lowered into the waiting earth and everyone filed past to cast their offerings in with her; I was last with my buttonhole of snowdrops picked from our garden. I also dropped in the stone and earth from home.
Despite lockdown rules there were hugs all round, and I was grateful to Penny, Elaine’s friend and mindfulness instructor for taking my arm as we walked away.
Elaine may not have got her fantasy Gothic send-off, but I think she would be pleased with the dignified solemnity of the occasion and the genuine sadness of all present.
There can be no wake afterwards, as originally planned, so I give my thanks to as many as possible as the party slowly dissolves around me. Mike and I are last to leave and return to what is now just my home.
I am feeling very bleak and unsettled. Something is over, and I’m glad for it, but something else is close by waiting to begin. I can feel it now.
Mike and I have tea, as Elaine would have, then despite the worsening weather decide to go for a drive around. Just what do you do after a funeral when everything is closed down?
During this reluctant tour Mike has a brainwave and says; “Let’s go to Knowlton.”
Knowlton was a small hamlet just off the main Wimborne/Cranborne road; all that really remains now is the ruined 12th century Christian church that was built in the centre of a Neolithic earthworks.
It’s a strange place with an aura of eeriness and brooding. I have been here before so had my wife but I can’t at first remember if we had been here together; a while later I remember that we had.
It lies on the route we took each time we went to the vintage barn at Cranborne. This was a journey Elaine and I always loved. It is a super sweeping road to drive, and the fields and skies around you are always so vast and proud but without any menace or threat.
The light at any time of day, but especially the early morning, brings colour and freshness to the landscape that Elaine’s Pre-Raphaelites would have enthused over. They would have loved also the air of dark romance that hangs in the atmosphere of this melancholy ruin.
This afternoon though they may have preferred their warm studios as it’s become freezing cold, the wind is a demon and rain falls in torrents.
We sit in the car for a while and luckily the rain stops so we venture outside for a walk around. Not surprisingly, we are the only ones about and have the place to ourselves. We set off across the earthworks towards the church, there is little shelter and the wind cuts through us.
I don’t fancy too much of this, a quick tour round will suffice, but then we notice something on the far side of the site and go to investigate.
There are two Yew trees growing close together and on them is an amazing sight of coloured ribbons, string, small toys, remains’ of flowers you name it and it’s probably there; coins have also been left.
We are not sure what it’s all for but a dog walker appears close by and we ask him. He confirms our suspicions that people leave these things as a form of offering to remember loved ones and to appeal to the ancient gods for help and good luck.
It all strikes a chord inside of me. I want to leave something for Elaine, coming here this afternoon wasn’t a chance thing I just know it. I don’t have anything with me only coins, but it doesn’t feel right to leave them so I resolve to return soon with something that has more of a feeling of her to it.
It’s very curious, but stood between those trees I felt close to Elaine; I don’t know why that should be but it just was, I can’t wait to return. We head for home as dark grey becomes the dominant colour of the landscape and the rain starts once more.
Our evening and night pass with the aid of beer and curry plus programmes on Ferrari and McLaren. We don’t talk too much about the day but are both relieved that it is over, but what now?
I have a dreamless night, though it seems to me that I’m sleeping in a huge dark void just floating in nothingness, waking isn’t much better.
I’m up before Mike and make coffee. He appears and says he slept ok which I’m glad of, that settee isn’t the best of beds.
We don’t bother with breakfast just coffee and talk. It is during this converse that Mike repeats something that he has said to me before, it sticks in my mind which is just as well, but I’ll tell you what and why next time.
Mike packs his gear as I tidy up and he’s ready to go by 9.30; I don’t really fancy being alone but have to be sometime. We say our goodbyes and he says he’ll phone me soon, I know he will but as he drives away the rain starts and so do the tears.
I can’t fully understand why, stupid I suppose, but I feel utterly alone in the world everything is black and hopeless.
I’m back indoors and sat on the settee, I can’t stop sobbing.
Two hours pass and I’m still sat there, all I want now is to die.
a horse, a husband, and cancer 