After all this time...

I still do.
I miss you.

March 30th 2014

You died Sunday March 30th 2014.
I was unable to attend your funeral on Wednesday April 16th.
I last saw you mid February, when I visited you at Peterborough City Hospital.
My darling, the one I have loved more than any other.
I will miss you every day, forever.

Thank you for everything.

Coppelia's Storybook closes here.

Slowly...

The care home where you stayed to give H a break from looking after you.

I turned up, surprising you. So weak, even thinner.

Couldn't stay long, too much for you. You sleep a lot.

Numb with shock and grief on the bus and train rides home. A frozen river of tears
in my veins. I knew you were very ill, but the shock of you there, before me,
the feel of your bones in my arms as I held you gently on leaving..where have you gone?

I hear some time later you are feeling better due to some new medication, you even managed
two cinema visits with your family over Christmas!

We speak hardly at all...and sometimes, when we do, you are confused and too tired for conversation beyond 5 minutes.

In five days you will be 85 years old.

The six months you were given to live is now more than half way gone.

The beginning of dying...

She returned to find he was dying.
Lung cancer.

A sudden cough in the middle of June persisted, weight fell away, as did his energy, his concentration, his appetite for a drink. On August 16th the diagnosis was confirmed.

She waits.
The clock ticks.
She held him briefly just days ago, he was already dissolving in her arms.

A good place to be...

He was there, somehow, with her...she didn't feel comfortless that week on her own. Memories of the time they had spent there brought an unexpected peacefulness and warmth, and Coppelia reflected on the contentment and happiness he had enjoyed in that place for so many years with his own family. There was a calming, reassuring presence in that place.
She slept alone in the bed they had shared, ate along at the table where they had played Scrabble whilst eating fish and chips...
And that high wall half way along the promenade, where a particularly precious memory came alive all over again.. June 23rd to June 30th 2013.
It was a good place to be.

Time in Sheringham...

It is now the next summer...all faded, all withdrew. Coppelia, the fool again?
His guilt, once more, prevented that final break with H. As she knew, deep down, it would.
So many false starts. H's health deteriorated severely. His daughter talked him out of moving to Sheringham.

Coppelia's daughter married in April this year. A light which carried her through the darkness.
She sees him, they talk, that easy and close way of theirs can never be broken or lost.
Days at the British Museum, galleries, a walk here and there. But she knows. And she won't even try any
more. The sadness is so full and so wide that tears no longer count.

She finds herself looking back often, remembering. Countless images, voices, feelings from the past.
Coppelia is taking a week's holiday in his flat in Sheringham next week, staying on her own. He has
always said she is welcome to use it any time she wishes.  Walking the coast path, exploring the town,
 wandering, remembering, she will try not to wish or to dream too much.

Space, peace, solitude. A time and place to come to terms with it all. Wish her well.
She is alone. Really alone. Whatever happens now.
My darling boy, I should have left you so, so long ago. But my heart just would not listen.

The end of July 2012

Coppelia did begin a new relationship in the spring of that year. In late March she met and began to see someone else, they grew close and a month later spent a week in Paris together. Paris - where HE had always promised to take her, but never had...and she remembered this every second of that week, saw him and heard him everywhere, found herself imagining, dreaming... Coppelia had found the will to insist they no longer had any contact, this was the only way forward from now on. And he was heartbroken. 
Her new relationship continued into early summer. He wrote her a poem around then, and contacted her, realising he could not go on without her, that the wall he had built had crashed down around him when he found she would be spending her days in the arms of another.

As life had continued for him with only H for company, the days becoming lonelier, emptier and more pointless, the future too bleak without Coppelia, he reached a decision. He told H he could not go on and would be moving to his holiday home in Sheringham in mid-September. By this time Coppelia's relationship had ended, her heart never really in it, the ache of the past always casting a shadow. When he told her of his decision, however, she felt caution - could she really trust he would carry this through, at last? Would he back down at the last minute? Dare she again open her heart and soul to him, be fully with him in every way, seeing a future together?

They met a few times, Coppelia maintaining a detachment, listening, questioning, feeling her way back to him. He totally understood her reticence, was more than understanding...he would move to Sheringham regardless of whether she joined him as he could no longer stay with H and live a lie to himself. He longed for Coppelia to be with him again...

So it was in a wood in summer as they laughed and played like children, when Coppelia said yes to him. August was days away. Dappled light danced in all directions around them as they spoke of how, when and where things may happen in the following weeks. His cancer checks had continued every six months and he was still in the clear. After the next one they would occur annually.
Hopefully time was still on their side, but nothing was certain and Coppelia knew that, with freedom to be properly together, she would drink in every moment with him.

Dear, dear Sheringham. That place of her dreams so long ago. Now back in her dreams, but more than that. They walked by the bridge over the brook by her home before he left, bright sunshine warming their backs, abundant and wild foliage spilling around the water, ducks playing and chasing amongst the lilies.  Her heart felt as if it was opening again as one of those lilies spread under the sky...