Dear Alex, all journeys have a purpose...

10^th April 2012.

Dear Alex

Steep, long, arduous, eternal mounting, trying hard not to slip, this journey is all that.

Journeys have an end, a meeting point, a purpose, and this is what I have learned to believe, trust in and hope and pray for. Pulses of life, heartbeats of hope, rhythms racing through blood of faith and belief. Something, I feel, has changed in you since Saturday…

Our nephew and his fiancée looked after the kids for a night on Saturday. People have been so hugely supportive in looking after the kids, giving me time to be with you alone, so I can get the balance right for them. Not wanting to take them in every day, showing them life is good, fun, light hearted, full of adventure, even whilst they go through this. They need time away from the reminder of where you are, time out from the enormity of pain I see every time I bring Monty, in particular, in to see you. Each time having to confront what he wants to escape from. His dad, not doing the things he did before, not fully understanding or being capable of knowing dad will be whole again, one day… Old enough to understand, fathom your absence, the day it all changed, the hurt, the frustration, the anger, the pain, but not old enough to have undying hope, relentless hope, despite. Not quite old enough to be able to have that ‘wild’ hope, it’s very logical life, at his age, taught to be so at school, taught an event and a consequent outcome, but here, you, his dad, does not equal ‘whole’ in x amount of time. Try as I might to be with him, guide, help him through, I anxiously witness our son struggle every time he knows he is coming in to see you, behaviour changing, fraught, sulking, playing up, different. I explain we love him, no matter how he feels, I am here to be there for him, for him to shout ‘why?’ ‘It hurts!’ if he needs this. I guess a part of him subconsciously shuts off, not wanting to upset me, in spite of the fact I tell him I’m the adult, I’m the mum, I am here to help him whatever it is he needs. A part of him also shuts off; as he cannot deal with the magnitude of this, the loss, the grief, and I know not to pester him to talk when sometimes he just needs and wants to go through it, then forget it. A natural process for a kid, anxious as this makes us as a grown up, with our need to analyse, put right, help, fix. Sometimes, I guess, we need to go through what we go through, and just know someone (me, you) is there and will never leave…thus feeling safe in feeling what we do.

Since Saturday, together for hours, a dog walk, a chilly seat outside the hospital and a long conversation, I try to instil in you the hope that I, family, friends, strangers, have in you. Hammering it home to you. Insisting you set in your mind that this is temporary, this is not forever; you are not finished yet. I ask you to place your hand on my heart, feel the truth of that which I believe. I am speaking from true belief, science has proven the brain can heal itself, neurons find alternative routes, eventually. We cry, laugh, you listen and I feel something change in you, a peace entering. Or maybe you’re just trying to shut me up! But I know, and since, you seem somehow stronger, ardently telling you this is temporary, you WILL be back. To place the word ‘temporary’ in the forefront of your mind, not ‘definite’. To place the word ‘whole’ there too, not think ‘this is it’. I tell you I know how impossible this must all sound considering what you feel incapable of doing at the moment, not even being able to speak, see. But I was there to make you believe, what the people surrounding you believe.

Whatever you determined in your own mind that day, I see it, baby. I see the determined Alex, I feel the determined, bloody minded, believing, strong of mind Alex I know.

Times do not sing vibrantly of health and wholeness and walking again, talking again, moving again, right now, but if we listen to this music, set it in our minds, in our spirits, our souls, with our faith in the Most High, one day, the lyrics of this will be blasting out, hurting our ears it will play so loudly, be so real…

Crumbling tonight at the keyboard weeping grief filled tears for my man, soul mate, best friend, protector, comforter, confidant, father of our four kids, I still feel this, honey. The grief doesn’t mean I’ve given this up, it just hurts, openly, sore and lonely.

I do know Alex, I DO know one day you will be back…I just wish you would walk through the door and say ‘phew, that was intense, here I am, glad that’s over, …fancy a cuppa?’…

One day….

I love you to eternity and back again…

Me xxxxxxxxxxx