My soulmate predicted the day he had to leave me
Nothing prepared her for heartbreak, but Louise Blyth, 36, from Nottinghamshire, has turned her grief into something beautiful...
Dear George,
The first time I met you, I thought you were a right plonker. Walking into a boardroom full of suited up executives, I was shaking with nerves.
It was 2006, and at 23, I was at my first day of a sales graduate training programme at Mars Chocolate in Slough.
Just then, you came up to me with a huge grin.
‘Hi, I’m George,’ you said, oozing confidence.
‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ I replied politely.
I figured you were someone important and tried to make a good impression. Later, I was called into room with the other trainees – and there you were, sat at the front – you were a trainee just like me!
You’d acted like you’d owned the place!
Who is this guy?! I thought. Little did I know then, I’d one day end up marrying you!
For the next few weeks, the group of us spent all our time together, made good friends.
I quickly realised that while you were confident, you were also friendly, funny and caring.
After our initial training, we were each sent to different parts of the country for work– me to Birmingham, and you to Edinburgh.
We kept in touch, and over time, I realised that I actually really liked you – you were more than a friend.
That December, you invited me up for New Year’s Eve, and as the clock struck midnight, we had our first kiss.
A year later, we both got jobs in Windsor, moved in together.
You were unlike anyone I’d been with before – you were silly, but fearless.
You radiated confidence in any situation, had so much energy, and adored cycling.
We were so happy, and on a day out to London in June 2010, looking more nervous than I’d ever seen you before, you got down on one knee on the Millennium Bridge and asked me to marry you.
‘Yes!’ I cried, bursting into tears of laughter as you presented me with a ring you’d bought from Accessorize.
‘I thought we could choose a proper one later,’ you grinned cheekily.
We got married on 2 July 2011, and when our son Charlie arrived in 2013, you were beaming as a new dad.
In May 2015, pregnant with our second child, we decided to leave the city and bought a big house in Nottinghamshire. You were smitten.
‘The only way I’m leaving this house is if I’m being carried out in a box,’ you said.
‘What are you like,’ I laughed, rolling my eyes.
Little did I know, that 18 months later, you’d be dead.
Our son Jamie was born that June, and life was perfect. In
January 2016, though, our perfect life was ripped to pieces. You’d been picking up colds, and you were going to the toilet often – sometimes bleeding.
A blood test led to a colonoscopy, which led to a terrifying diagnosis. ‘You have bowel cancer,’ a doctor said, drawing a dark curtain around our lives. The cancer had spread to your liver, too.
‘I’ll beat this,’ you said, your confidence shining through. What followed was seven rounds of chemotherapy, and this ‘magic medicine’, as we’d called it, worked wonders to shrink your tumours.
That summer, you had surgery at The Park Hospital in Nottingham to remove the tumour from your liver, and things were looking good. So good, in fact, that just six weeks later, you rode your bike from London to Paris, raising £10,000 for the charity Bowel Cancer UK.
Not even cancer was going to stop you from living your life, but cancer did show us that it was the little things that mattered most.
Giving the kids a bath, reading them bedtime stories – that’s where the real magic is.
But a month later, despite fighting so hard, your cancer was back, and your decline was quick.
I knew that when you were admitted to hospital in early November 2016, you weren’t coming home.
But it was that time in hospital when something magical happened to us both, wasn’t it?
It was as if we’d had some kind of spiritual awakening, and we were suddenly, somehow, able to accept that you were going to die.
You went from being in so much pain to being so peaceful and happy.
‘I’m going to die on Friday,’ you told me, convinced.
When I said goodnight to you that Thursday, I knew you were right – you would die on Friday 18 November.
Back home, I was looking through old pictures, when all of a sudden, there was a massive energy in the room – a physical presence that I can’t describe.
In that moment, I knew that you had passed away.
A nurse called shortly after to confirm it – you had died of bowel cancer, aged 34.
I’d felt you leave me, and it comforted me to know that it had been so peaceful.
Now that you were gone, though, my world crumbled. The love of my life was gone. Later that morning, I walked into Charlie’s room.
He was only three, and as his little hands grabbed at his toy cars, I told him that his daddy had died.
‘What’s Heaven like?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t know, love,’ I said. ‘But I know Daddy is there.’
‘OK,’ Charlie smiled, and that was that.
In that moment, it hit me that the one person who I needed to hug me wasn’t there anymore.
We held your funeral on 15 December, and it was a true celebration of your life. So much so, we actually baptised Jamie on the same day.
‘The cycle of life,’ I smiled – I’d even placed flowers on your bicycles to honour this.
As your coffin was led out, a few friends of ours stood up, armed with various musical instruments, and started performing All You Need is Love as a flash mob choir.
It was the recreation of a scene from your favourite film, Love Actually, and I know you were up there laughing at us.
It was after your funeral, when everyone left and life became quiet, that it really sunk in – the fact that you were never coming back.
The loss was everywhere – in your toothbrush on the sink, your un-wrinkled pillow in bed next to me, and the one cup of tea in the morning instead of two.
I had to do all the shopping, take the bins out, sort out car insurance – mundane things that each shattered my heart because they were all things that you used to take care of. Grief was everywhere. ‘Daddy’s home!’ Charlie cried one day.
He’d seen your blue BMW on the drive and got confused.
It broke my heart all over again, and then once more when I sold the car.
In November 2018, I got the idea of writing a book.
I wrote about our life, your death, my grief.
It focused on the last two weeks of your life, when something miraculous happened to make your passing more bearable.
My darling, your death opened my eyes.
I lost the love of my life, but gained something so powerful too – a trust in an incredible power out there that I know has bigger plans for all of us.
Hope is Coming has now been published, and I can just see the smug look on your face.
‘I’ve got a book written about me, you know,’ I can see you telling people.
I hate that fact that Charlie, now seven, and Jamie, five, never really got to know the amazing man their daddy was. But I remind them every day. Today, I’ve adapted to a new normal, and now it’s the bigger moments that make it obvious you aren’t around – Charlie learning to ride a bike, Jamie starting school.
You’re watching, though, aren’t you?
I could spend the rest of my days being angry with life for snatching you away from me – and believe me, there are many days like that. Instead, I choose to see you in everything – your cheeky smile in our sons’ eyes, your warm laugh in the smell of rain, your glowing confidence in the sunshine, and your kindness in the simple wonderfulness of life.
I know we’ll meet again. For now, I cling on to hope.
I know you’re watching over us
All my love, Louise xx
Hope is Coming is available on Amazon. Visit Louise @wonderfulness_of_life on Instagram and visit her website at wonderfulnessoflife.com