Happy Anniversary John!

Today would have been our 27th Wedding Anniversary.  And the date is the 27th, so we would have been saying, hey, it’s 27 years on the 27th!

Well, sadly, we didn’t make it.  We made 25 years (nice trip to Venice to celebrate), we made 26 (I’ll have to look up what we did, probably just a local restaurant).

27 years and I’m standing by his graveside.  At least we didn’t split up.  At least it was a case of ’til death us do part’.

It was a beautiful day at the cemetery, sunny and lovely white clouds and windy.  No-one there but me.  I took some deep red and orange/golden chrysanthemums.  I didn’t cry much today, I just felt sad.

This awful, awful thing that by definition your partner is no longer experiencing what you are experiencing.  No-one ever sees their own grave – not after the event anyway.

It’s growing over with weeds and I’m not sure if I should clear them or let it revert to nature/grass.

I thought – poor John, it will soon be autumn and the leaves will be falling from the trees again, a whole summer of ‘lush’ (we used to joke about that word with regard to spring greenery etc) growth in the cemetery around your final resting place, that you never saw, gone.  Soon back to another winter, and you a whole year in the ground.

Sometime, maybe (though I can see it’s over the top), I will go through all my diaries and note down what we were doing on every Wedding Anniversary.  Does it matter though?  That first 27 August mattered, you crying at the altar, you were so moved, at the church on the Isle of Wight.  Then fast forward to graveside.

We so often used to use, in day to day conversation, joking about something, the Private Eye refrain, ‘Er, that’s enough.(something/whatever it was)..’  (Private Eye readers will know what I mean.)

Thought for the day: ‘Not enough anniversaries.’

A few more would have been nice, John.  There weren’t enough.

(Er, that’s enough profundity and gloom!)