The Sandcastle

Nobody can ever imagine what it is like to lose your love but I cannot ignore the elephant in the room if I am going to blog my journey.

So I have chosen to share my experience through an analogy. It is rather a long analogy but I hope you will bear with me as I try to paint a picture of my loss by telling you a story I have written…

One day, a little girl was playing on the beach and decided to build a sandcastle. She only had one bucket and she knew that although it was possible to build a castle with her bucket, she had far bigger plans.

You see, this girl didn’t want to just settle for the kind of sandcastle that appears after a few firm taps on the bottom of the bucket because she had bigger ideas. She wanted turrets, and a fortress wall and a drawbridge and a moat and well…the list goes on.

Anyway, she gets to work on it. She spends a bit of time carefully mapping out the boundaries and deciding how she is going to build this masterpiece and uses her finger to draw an outline in the sand where she will make the walls.

A little boy has noticed what she is doing. He is all alone, just like she is and although he is shy, he plucks up the courage to ask her if he can join in. She likes the look of him and also on a practical note, she sees that he has a bucket too and she agrees that they will work together and make this lovely castle.

All afternoon, they play together on the beach and craft the most wonderful castle. They dig out the moat and squeal with laughter as they run back and forth to the sea with water and try to fill it up.

Later on, as the sun goes down, both of them know that the end of their fun is nearing as they will be called back to their family to be told that it is time to go home. And so quickly, they both use the shells they have gathered to put the finishing touches on their castle and without noticing that the tide is coming in, they stand back and admire their construction.

It is quite simply the best castle that anyone could ever make and they are both so proud that they built it together.

But suddenly, from nowhere or so it seems, a massive wave comes crashing over it and in one mighty swipe, the castle has gone.

It is absolutely obliterated.

The little girl looks on in horror. She feels an overwhelming sense of disbelief as her whole body feels like it has gone into shock. She couldn’t see that coming and there was nothing she could do about it.

She stares at what was once the castle. That beautiful castle that she had been crafting so lovingly with her mate in what felt to her like a lifetime. 

She can just about make out the boundaries of it but the walls and the turrets and the drawbridge have all gone. The shells are scattered all over the place – just fragments of a reminder that just moments ago, things had been so very different.

And now she starts to shiver and cry. She turns for comfort to her mate.

But he has gone.

She falls to her knees and scrambles around trying to pick up a tiny shell. And holding it in her hand, she knows already that as small as it may be, it will serve as a reminder of what once was.

At that moment in time, the whole day just seems wasted. All of that effort to be left with nothing and no-one that will ever truly understand just how magnificent that castle was.

She vows to tell people about that castle. And the day on the beach with her mate who helped her build it. But she knows that they will never really understand. They will never really get it.

For Bebe. I can’t rebuild the castle without you.

I will build another castle. It won’t be the same but it will still be magnificent.

The Fuschia Tree

On the 6th of June 2014, my partner of nearly 8 years was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was 37 years old. 
We married on the 22nd of June and he passed away at home, where he wanted to be, just 12 days later.
I have been in hiding for the last six months. Not literally, although it may have seemed that way to some people. But now, I am ready and willing to share my story and my journey of 'Living the New Normal'.

It may have been logical to start my story at the beginning. It may have been easier to let you know about the shock of diagnosis, the traincrash of being dealt 'the blow' that our lovely life together was about to be smashed to pieces but I figured that there is no point in that. Not today.

Because today something happened. Something small but amazing that unlocked my soul and let it breathe once more.
Today I am filled with hope and  I am choosing to start my story with where I am today.

I live in a little terraced house in South Wales. It doesn't have much of a garden, more of a backyard.
Back in June, the yard was filled with flowers - courtesy of my mother, a keen gardener who decided that if my Bebe was coming home from the hospital then he would appreciate something 'nice' to look out upon.

So there it was, one day on our return from 'the blow'- a yard transformed with beautiful plants and flowers every shade of the rainbow. It was here, in the yard, that he asked me to marry him. Amidst the rented blooms and in the blazing heat of the summer sunshine.

After he died the flowers remained. My mother moved in for a couple of weeks and tended to them morning and night. She also tended to me. I was incapable of doing anything at all.

In the heat of last summer, I lay in bed under the duvet. I didn't eat. I didn't speak. I wanted to die. I could not manage to do beyond the basics - laying in bed and having a shower or a bath. I figure now, that both of these activities were the only way I could feel heat wrapped around my body but beyond this there was nothing.

But during that time, my mother continued to water the flowers. She also fed the flowers - something I had never realised one needed to do. She also tried to feed me. I would not eat.

And then she left. After a couple of weeks I requested that she allowed me to be alone. I had become dependent on her buying my two staple requirements - diet coke and cigarettes.
I also knew, despite my acute state of trauma that I would eventually leave the house if I knew I had to fetch these supplies myself.

She left reluctantly. To see the depth of her own daughter's pain on losing her love must have been heartbreaking in itself. But she agreed to leave me on one condition - that I look after the flowers.
'It's easy', she said 'you only have to water them - you must water them or they will die'.

As she left on that Saturday morning, I agreed that I would look after them.
And then I went back to bed. The sun continued to shine and I stayed inside with curtains firmly drawn. And in my world, that time seemed to have forgotten, it continued to be dark.

I never watered the flowers. And they withered - until they browned and then they died.

As Autumn set in, and I stood out on the yard to smoke yet another cigarette - I would stare at the graveyard of flowers that I had 'cultivated'.

On the window sill, sits a fuschia tree, which at her height of glory was resplendent and a beautiful backdrop to the aforementioned proposal. The last few months, like me, she has looked lost, bleak and lifeless. I don't know much about gardening but I came to the conclusion that like me - life was over for this little plant. No more blossom or colour, just a stark network of dry, dead twigs that had once been the life and soul of the (garden) party.

But today I noticed something amazing. I was staring at the Fuschia tree and smoking yet another cigarette. Like my life in the early days of the 'new normal', I just wasn't expecting to see or witness anything different....

....But there on the 'lifeless' twigs, I spotted some tiny, baby green shoots. It struck me so dramatically that life does go on. My little fuschia tree that has been with me throughout the last 6 months or so has sprung back to life. She never actually stopped living.

And I realised today, that my life is like my fuschia tree. I too, just like people promised me, have begun to develop some new green shoots. Small shoots that have the capacity to grow and if I tend to them then I have the chance to blossom again.

For Bebe. I promised you that I would be okay. I am.