For my own selfish sake.

It was 2 years ago today that Robin passed. 24th October. I think I confused you by writing about it in advance 2 days ago...it was a Monday in 2016...the day he was expecting his family...but of course this year the 24th falls on a Wednesday....

 This morning  we bring bunches of flowers from our gardens, my sister and I, ...and lay 5 smooth  Budleigh pebbles on the heaping pile. 

On the way into Higher Cemetery we stop to talk to a woman walking a sweet, bouncy labrador puppy on a lead.... and watch this squirrel playing in circles, burying nuts in the grass round the pine tree next to his  grave. And we take them as signs of Robin's close presence around us. Beaming his love always.... where ever we are.

Later we drive to the churchyard near Lucerne House where he stayed in the last weeks of his life.  The churchyard where, at this time of year, the giant Arbutus 'strawberry tree' drops its huge bounty of soft, ripe, red fruits all over the gravestones below.... 

which we gather up into plastic containers to take home. My sister makes wonderful jam from them. Like she did last year on this same day.

We buy a picnic from Sainbury's-  vegetable samosas, mozzarella and tomato wraps, guacamole dip and crisps, olives and coconut water -  and sit on bench in the churchyard in the sunshine and remember all the good things about Robin and his life.

  I don't let myself think about the details of that day 2 years ago....I skim over them as if they happened in a film to someone else. Otherwise I would be curled in a soggy heap along with the squashed arbutus berries scattered on the surface of the graves.

Tonight I cry tears for him...but I realise they are really for me. I forget sometimes,  deep in the well of my loss, deep in my longing for him to still be here, that he was very ill, that the disease was eating him up, hurting him, that he couldn't have the life he wanted, that our life as we had known it was over. I can't really bear to imagine his own pain.

So in the last years even though I know it was a kind of living hell for both of us....that he was never going to get better....that he could never hold me again .... that it is beyond reason or sense...I still want him here ...on this earth.... breathing, grinning at me...loving me ....for my own selfish sake ....not for his.