Dearest John

I am in our ‘caramel milkshake’ cafe, in tribute to you and our lives together.

We first came here years and years ago, and although they stopped serving more interesting flavours like caramel ages ago, the name always stuck.

We would meet up here sometimes – ‘see you in the caramel milkshake cafe’.

I’ve decided I will eat something small before going to ‘see you’ for the last time, at the undertaker’s chapel of rest.  I am scared and uncertain about going – have been deliberating about it for days.  I don’t even know whether you would have wanted me to see you.  But it seems like the right thing somehow – I stood by you for twenty nine years of life, I should stand by you now.

We hoped so much you would get better John, and then when you weren’t improving, we so didn’t want you to suffer.

Oh but I wanted you back home and recovering so much!

I have definitely got ‘survivor guilt’.  It could just as easily be me there and you visiting me.  How sad to think of you alone, hanging round Croydon grieving for me.

I’m afraid I will turn into my mother now, a grieving recluse.

I will miss you more than anything, John.  I will miss your character, your support, your kindness, your love.

Is today the worst day of my life?  To see you dead?

It will be my private goodbye ceremony – as opposed to the public goodbye of the funeral.

Poor John has gone the way of the caramel milkshake.  Receded into history, just a memory.