Dear Alex, tomorrow's a new day...

22^nd June 2012

Dear Alex,

Grieving is such a strange process. You’re told you go through the denial phase…but I was convinced I wasn’t. Just hoping against hope you would just be healed, it would all just be over, you’d come running back in from a surf. Wedding ring round your neck on the chain I got you for your 30^th birthday, as you feared you’d lose it off your finger. You’re unable to wear it now, it presses against your little finger and middle finger as your hand is in the splint trying to stretch out the fingers you cannot move, so they do not seize into a fist position.

I have caught glimpses of people, looking a little like you, and caught my self thinking, ‘oh here he is…’ only, thud, sharp pain, no, it’s not you, realisation that wakes me back bolt upright into my reality, no you.

I am facing what I never thought would ever be, you are not here as you used to be, you are not who you used to be, and it is like that, and I still have to carry on. I am finding it impossible to ignore...

I am not, have not been ready to acknowledge it. That rainbow hope that things will not be as they say they will, this is a sprint, not a marathon, not the rest of our lives…but, the sprint is still going, and , yes, it’s feeling rather like a marathon. My body tires, my thoughts flash up pictures of you laughing, running, playing with those love-kids of ours.

A glimpse of you stroking my face and kissing me before you leave for a surf…

You are not here.

Life is so very, very different.

My medicine is my gratitude journal, seeing what I do have, only my writing of late has slowed. My thoughts swamped with memories of you as you were. You are not as you were.

I do not know where I am. I am more lost  than I have ever been. Mourning, refusing to acknowledge how long this is taking, how long this will take…

All I want is you. All I want is my strong man, husband, father of our four, so capable, so physically strong, scooping us all up, your family, your children, me, in your manly arms and cuddling us all through this.

But I am me, just little me, doing all this, raising these blessings, all four of them, without you.

Guilt, grief floods, trespasses on your once able to follow a thought process though mind. It seeps in, it takes over, loss, memories, needs, wants of you, as you were.

This trails and it trails. It reaches forward, it shows me we are moving forward, but oh, how long this takes. Hoping for a miracle.

This week, my loneliest yet, people have just shown up. Been sent. Friends, family to support, repair, offer me tissues.

I have been overwhelmed, feeling a canvas of love from those who surround me. I cannot say I am alone. Everyone seems to want to be there. They have not let me shut the door, wallow, stagnate, and have pulled me up without even realising it.

All I want is you. I want to shout ‘come back to me, Alex, be here with me, where are you?!' But I am facing what one of my worst nightmares is, that you’re not.

Thank you all who have been here for me, even without knowing. I have been sliding, but held firm by you all.

Me xxxxxxxxxx