Moving in

I'm taking life one day at a time.There are good times and bad times.  I can keep the grief under control for much of the time.  Once in a while the loss becomes too much.  That's when I choose to have a good day and bring to mind the happy memories.  I hope you don't mind if I share them with you, but I will warn you, there's a certain amount of soppiness in this post.

That summer of 1996 was wonderful and terrifying and completely unreal.  I'd expected to remain with the man I'd been married to for over twenty years for the rest of my days.  I'd have told you, in all honesty, that I loved him.  I wouldn't have believed that I could be overwhelmed with feelings so powerful that they could not be ignored.  I'd fallen hard for this sweet, funny, geeky little man and I now realise that, for the first time in my life, I was truly in love.  

Being apart was torture.  We met, secretly, as often as we could and I lived for the meetings.  We walked along the beach, or sit in the Tug & Turbot pub in the Marina   At the weekend, I'd take my washing to the launderette and he'd meet me there.  In between meetings, there were phone calls and of course, there were the Friday night sci-fi group get-togethers, when we sat side by side, as close as we dared. Together, we realised that we couldn't go back to the way things were - neither of us could be happy unless we were together.

David set out to find somewhere where we could be together and move out of his parents' home.  He'd tried to move out once before, but his mother had sabotaged the attempt.  This time, he was determined.  He found a place and we moved in together on Halloween - and that's where we stayed.  

For the rest of our lives together,  when I woke up next to him, I wondered how it had happened that my life had veered so dramatically and gloriously off-track.             

Total soppiness alert!  

I've been listening again to some of "our songs" from that summer.  The lyrics of  Kathy's song expressed so much of what I was feeling at the time.  David wasn't really a fan of Simon & Garfunkel back then (although that changed!) but I wrote out the words of this song for him - I found them in the papers he'd saved, along with a poem I'd written. I may share that another time.  

David once told me that Every time you walk in the room was about the way he felt whenever he saw me, and we adopted When I need you as "our song" at that time.  When I think about our life together, I do have tears in my eyes;  but I also know that I am so lucky to have had something that some people never experience.  And I am grateful for that.