Difficult Memories

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my heart not only being broken but completely obliterated. On the 13th of September 1988 a policeman arrived at my door and tried to kindly break the news that my husband of 11 months and 13 days had died in a traffic accident on his way home from work. To say that I loved him is an understatement. To say that I have learned to forget him is an insult.

I always felt that WH Auden expressed loss so beautifully in Funeral Blues:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

He did not choose to leave me and I know that he died loving me as his last words at the accident scene were for me. It is impossible to explain the grand passion that was our relationship. It had an intensity of feeling that still haunts me in dreams many years later. I had a feeling that we would not have much time together (a gift from God) and boy did we pack a lot in. I realise that I have written this much without speaking of Julian by name. He was a once off. He had a difficult adolescence and had lived quite a life before I met him. I was seen in some circles as his stabilising influence but I think that by the time he met me he was just ready to seek a sense of home and I was more than happy to be that home. I never doubted his love and felt bathed in its sunshine.

In the days after he died, I couldn't eat or sleep. I couldn't fathom the rest of my life without the love, care and light that he brought to me. The intensity of that pain is with me still in a reflected form. I still miss him with an ache that will only be relieved by being with him again.

Julian couldn't sing a note or hold a tune but he still sang to me Van Morrison's "Have I told You Lately That I Love You". Up at his grave in Enniskerry on Saturday I could still hear the song in my mind. I have loved, do love and will always love the man who promised never to leave me if it was his choice. He is buried where he asked to be laid at rest a couple of weeks before his death. I miss him.

I do wonder what our life would have been like if he were still alive and I am a realist and I also wonder what problems we may have had by now and if our relationship would have survived them. I will always wonder these things but there is one thing that I am sure of - we will have the chance to meet again in the life after this one when every tear wil be brushed from every eye. Thank God for the hope in the future. I still miss him.

I still miss him.