Dear Alex, Seeking Solace.

The Winter Wonderland fundraiser we did for you last year.

Dear Alex

I cannot stop the panic tonight, the heart palpitations, the ache around my heart, searing from time-to-time.

I have had a very stressful afternoon, and it is rolling over and spilling out into the next few days as I try and wrap everything up before the close of play, when everyone goes home for their weekend. Only the weekends for us are not as we used to know them. Not how they used to be. A family untied, deciding lazily, tired from night shifts with the kids, where we would go to let them run off steam.

It is a question, now, of how do I break it to them that we are going in to see you again, that the journey made Mitzi throw up the other day, that it sometimes takes 1hr 3/4 to get to see their daddy, where there is very little to do for them and I am preoccupied with you. Their groans, their 'oh mum, do we have to?' And I talk to them about family units and family time being different but essential, no matter what effort it takes. About responsibility, about supporting their dad, about patience and kindness and setting aside our own wants for the bigger picture... And I hear myself repeating myself every time we visit you, and I see their baby faces, rosy cheeked and full of expectation, innocence of life, and I feel such sadness fro them.

I feel tired, I feel like I go up, I pedal well for a while, positive, looking forwards, then I crash, as I realise when the kids are in bed, I live alone. A mummy alone. No partner to guide me through, run me a bath from time-to-time. Talk to me, chat with me.

No one to wonder together if we are raising them right? Doing the right thing? Just his mummy to talk to about football went, when Monty gets home. Knowing I do not understand the rules and I couldn't kick a ball if my life depended on it! So I cook him his second dinner as he tells me, hot faced, sweaty, wet from playing in the rain, covered in mud, "I'm starving, mum!' I make him hot chocolate, cuddle him and read a little while with him to get him to sleep...

I love these kids.

But loneliness, when it hits, regardless of whom is around, hits hard. It is a sudden vacuum, sucking in it all the positivities, it spits out moments and memories of who we were before.

And I ache.

Oh and how I ache tonight.

Tears spill, yet nothing alleviates my need for you.

I wish our world was just you and me again.

How much I lost you when you had your accident, I could never have been prepared for.

So many involved.

Too many involved...

...And I seek solace...

A solace from a man I will never know or feel again.


Me xxxxxxxx