Long live the fighters

Ten years ago, today – 29th December, my 43-year-old husband took his last laboured breath, turning his body cold, grey and devoid of a once great life. What followed was a chaotic stillness, a messy symphony of pain, emptiness, silence, hysteria, wandering misguided without our familiar anchor.  In the days, months, and years until we – me and our two sons, arrived here, armed with a decade of falling, evolving, and adapting to a life with his absence.

It was vividly messy at first, likely visible to those who know grief. That ‘first’ bit went on for years, not weeks or months.  The timing of which is not ideal when, at the same time, you’re (now) raising two sons alone. They were 13 and 9 years old – babies. They are now men; big – like their dad, strong – in every imaginable way, gentle giants with the softness of heart that comes from knowing pain, and a determination that comes from knowing the fragility of life – absolute real-life superheroes.

Somehow, we made it this far.

I learned to build a new life, and so did the boys. We built it together. Slowly learning how to navigate a new path and learning about our nearly new selves along the way. I remember when, not long after Michael died, an elderly neighbour explaining to me over the garden fence, ‘You’ll have two lives, you know. Your life with Michael, but you’ll have another life too’. I couldn’t see it at the time but now, with the wisdom of time, I know exactly what she meant.

Sometimes, I felt like I was living more than one life, the one I used to have – a wife and mother, still trying to be the person I was ‘before’ alongside the person I have become in the years since Michael’s death. The one who had to adapt to survive. Holding on tightly to the past whilst sailing the ship to our future. Now, I recognise the different incarnations. I love and respect both. One doesn’t replace the other; they live together, like the sprouting of a branch on a tree.
In the same way, grief does not ever truly disappear, but instead changes shape, much like love. Our love and our loss live together – intertwined. But as the years went by, love became the stronger voice. The rawness of the pain within me slowly dissipated, and I learned to carry what was left small like a purse holding all my most precious possessions. The branch grew bigger and stronger, and new branches followed.

Nevertheless, today I felt lost, not knowing how one marks such an occasion. I decided on walking our dog, the ever-loving ever-faithful Hector the Protector, who joined our lives when Michael became ill and is now 60 in doggy years. In spite of being ‘happy now’, I stopped and cried for a life that never was, the moments Michael never got to see, the times our sons never got to share with their dad, the dreams of a life of how it ‘should have been’ and the pain of remembering how good it was and the simple sadness of it all. The tears soon turned into pride at how far we’ve come, gratitude for the love, and life, we have now, remembering the love we had then, and feeling lucky. I am the lucky one.

In the last ten years, it feels like I have come of age, alongside our sons. We’ve all grown and evolved, and I could not be prouder of the fine men our sons have become. I didn’t think I could do it. I remember a time when I was sobbing sitting on the floor at the bottom of my bed in the earlier days, dark in the depths of grief, thinking I couldn’t do this; I couldn’t live without Michael, and I couldn’t raise two sons alone. But I did. We did.

In his final moments, I promised to raise our boys how he would’ve wanted, encouraging them to live a life of hope ambition, love, and laughter. I thank him for everything he gave me—all the love I had then and the love I have now.

Michael, I remember. Like the bark on the tree, you are part of me, growing and changing like the leaves season after season.

He once wrote this to me:

“You are the sunshine of my life. My sun in the winter, my light in the dark, my path in the jungle, my pilot in the sky, my ship in the sea, my camel in the desert. Most of all you are my wife who brings me life.”

Little did he know, he became just that for me.

Or maybe somehow, somewhere he knows.

Thank you for guiding me through the last ten years, wherever you are.

Goodnight, god bless, we love you.