Dear John

It’s two and a bit months since you ‘entered into eternal life’ (I hope – I wish!) and I’m having a tough time staying at my Mum’s again.

You’re not there anymore to provide counterbalance – to be my foil.  To give me moral support, to back me up in arguments.

Even when I’ve stayed here alone before, if I’d had a minute spare I would have perhaps phoned or texted you.  And when I got back home I’d tell you what happened, have a moan maybe, get your understanding and sympathy.

You were someone close to me, someone I could turn to.  Now there’s just a void.  It’s just me and her.

And it’s all the implications again, bothering me.  The implications of what’s happened, new little things striking me one after another.

We go to an antique fair and I just think all the time how you would’ve enjoyed it, what pieces you would’ve chosen, or what I would’ve bought you as a gift.  But it’s all history, you’ll never admire an antique again, I’ll never give you a gift again.  (I bought you so many over the years.)

I see a lovely cute puppy and know how you would’ve loved to see it, and it breaks my heart, the sentimentality, that you’ll never own a puppy, that there’s never going to be a moment when I put a gift puppy in your arms (there may never have been anyway, but at least we could fantasise).

I see a dead badger by the road and I want to point it out to you (because you liked badgers and you would have been sad).  Same with big pretty patches of daffodils growing on a village green.  Same with a nice view of the countryside, with fields full of lambs – same with everything.

I watch a film that you would have known and I can’t get my head round that I’m still here, but your brain is disintegrating in the earth – all your memories gone, all your knowledge lost.

It’s like I’m starting to forget what’s happened for odd moments, then the horrible awareness floods back.

Oh, I am so in the wrong ‘trouser of time’!  I want you to be home with me, I want you seeing what I’m seeing, talking to me, continuing to pass through life beside me.  I can’t believe I’ve lost you.

I demand this horror undone!  I want you back!