Dear Alex, A few second's memory...

Dear Alex,

I began this thinking of you, as I always do, and yet I have forgotten what I was inspired by to write this...

I remember thinking of the visit today, and OK, yes, now I remember what it was...

It was you, it was New Year, and one of my resolutions.

To think of you, as you were before, and collect those thoughts.

To remember.

I have been trying to think of you as you were before each day, just to practice a memory of you on a daily basis.

So I can write them, hold them, show them to the kids one day, who their daddy was, before the accident.

But I haven't been able to, not yet.

It has been 11 long days I have tried, and try as I might, the memories are too hard, too painful, blocked.

Today I allowed myself a few second's of memory. I had a short film-like memory of you. We are out in the garden in France, Sitting on the porch, by our old Espace. You smoke a cigaret, sink a beer. Chickens, ducks put away for the night, kids in bed. Sun has set, it is dark, blowing smoke rings, never far from me as you pace and talk. Your strong arms, T-shirt and baggy jeans. tanned surfed-a-lot face bright. Blue eyes I am sunken by. Those eyes, that mouth...that you...and the few seconds I keep hold of. I do not relinquish, I embrace the thought, the memory, I am perturbed by the fact I cannot think of you, feel you as you once were. Why can I not??

Why is it so, so hard?

Where are the memories?

Why can I not reach them and fell them as reality, that life, that you and that us was real. I feel like it has slipped away, and after having to deal with the everyday, I was never strong enough to look back. And now I want to, I really do, I want to remember like it was yesterday that you and me, but I don't.

It feels like it was another life, one I am no longer part of, almost as though I never was, so distant and fleeting are any recollections.

Tomorrow I am coming in to see you again, although I cannot stop for long, with 3 hours there and back in between school runs, it doesn't afford me much time. Although this is not for long, a short stay at Exeter, so it is not too daunting.

Alex, you have made me so proud, but those moments I lose you, I am hopeless, a small child wanting love. I am lost.

I hope tomorrow you will be OK. I hope tomorrow I will be able to face another memory, that I will manage to find one of you.

I hope for so much...



me xxxxxxxxx