Life mapped out

DEAR BEL

JUST before Christmas 2019, my darling wife fell and broke her hip. Three weeks later she died.

We knew each other for 60 years and were married for 56. The day we married was when all my birthdays and Christmases came at once. After her kidney transplant in February 1998, she had 20 years of a good life.

Once the children were off our hands, Viv loved to travel. We would drive all over the UK; and she was good at map reading and we never got lost. We travelled by coach all over the Continent and had some wonderful times. In 2003 we celebrated our 40th anniversary with two weeks in Canada and always said we’d to go back. But after 2018 her dialysis got in the way.

We had a wonderful 56 years. I’m not pretending we never had a cross word because I’d be lying — but we weathered the storms.

I miss her so much and cannot believe it is now two years since I lost her. I find it so sad that other people can’t have what we had, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Are you wondering why I wrote to you? Yes, this is about going on without the one you love — but do you mind me sharing the good news of a happy marriage?

DEREK

MIND? I rejoice! You and your darling Viv never did get lost because you were both so good at mapping your lives together, driving the same course.

Sometimes it rained, of course, but you carried on regardless because even during those briefly uncomfortable times you never doubted that your ultimate destination would be within each other’s heart, for ever.

It’s wonderful to read your tribute to your wife, to marriage, and to the great happiness that’s possible if you are lucky enough to meet the right person.

Between the lines, of course, we read your ongoing disbelief at your loss — and there will be many bereaved people reading that who think, ‘That’s just how I feel.’

Yet you sound calm: grateful for all those years of shared happiness rather than eaten up with regret that they have gone.

Thank you for sending your story, and for reinforcing my profound sense that deep love — like that shared by you and Viv — can never die.