Yesterday, or the more things change...

My sincere and heartfelt thanks to all of you who were in Kinky Lounge last night. A few of you I hadn't met before, but many were my friends - indeed for some of the time in there it was just me and my friends. A couple of you even knew what was going on for me yesterday and I am profoundly grateful for your support. For those who didn't know - here it is.

I realised over the weekend (while writing my last blog entry) that my lifestyle now is actually strangely similar to when I was caring for R - by which I mean lack of sleep and lack of food. R was not just my number one priority - he was my only priority. He came first. last and in the middle. He had Multiple Sclerosis. For the last 10 years of his life he was quadriplegic and needed 24 hour care. Over that time the amount of home care he received increased from 8 hours per week to the dizzy heights of 18 hours - leaving me to cover the other 150-160 hours alone. (And there are no moving and handling guidelines for a paraplegic handling a quadriplegic - believe me I've looked. Truth is no-one else is daft enough to even try!) My RL friends would ask "when do you ever get time for yourself?". My reply was always the same "I'll have time for me when he is gone", all the while never really believing that day would come.

How can I even begin to sum up all that R was to me? For starters we were so much more than just husband and wife. We were - and still are - soul mates. We met when I was 20, he was 27. I was still 20 when we married. It was mutual love at first sight. The first thought that popped in to my head was 'This is the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with'. It took us 6 weeks to figure out that we both felt the same way about each other, and from that point on we were pretty much inseperable - in the 25 years we had together we only spent 13 and a half nights apart (and he spent 4 weeks in hospital, I spent one week).

One of the first conversations we had was about favourite songs. He had very wide musical tastes so there were too many to choose from. My favourite at the time was 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' by Bonnie Tyler, and the words were just so fitting that it became our song. For those of you that don't know the words - it goes like this.

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you're never coming round

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit nervous

That the best of all the years have gone by

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit terrified

And then I see the look in your eyes

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit restless and I dream of something wild

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit helpless and I'm lying like a child in your arms

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit angry and I know I've got to get out and cry

Turnaround, every now and then I get a little bit terrified

But then I see the look in your eyes

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

Turnaround, every now and then I know you'll never be the boy you always wanted to be

Turnaround, every now then I know you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am

Turnaround, every now and then I know there's no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you

Turnaround, every now and then I know there's nothing any better -

There's nothing that I just wouldn't do

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

Turnaround bright eyes, every now and then I fall apart

And I need you now tonight

And I need you more than ever

And if you'll only hold me tight

We'll be holding on forever

And we'll only be making it right

'Cause we'll never be wrong together

We can take it to the end of the line

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time

I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark

We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

I really need you tonight

Forever's gonna start tonight

Forever's gonna start tonight

It felt to me almost as though the song was just waiting for him to come along - the first couple of verses describe me perfectly the way I was with him, and the last verse 'every now and then I know you'll never be the boy you always wanted to be...' is him to a 'T'. The chorus is just so us too - particularly the 'Forever's gonna start tonight' bit. For us, forever did start overnight - twice! There was this really strange symmetry to our life together - we spent the first night we were together, and the last, awake the whole time - just talking, just the two of us alone together. That last night was like the closing of a loop. I knew he was dying, and I'm pretty sure he knew too, though we didn't talk about it. It was the night the Chilean miners were rescued. I had had a premonition when they were found that R wouldn't live to see the first miner emerge - I must have been the only person on the planet who didn't want them to be rescued. In the event he actually lived to see the first miner come to the surface. He died while the second rescuer was getting into the capsule.

I miss him more than words can ever describe. Nothing and no-one can ever replace him. In less than a month it will be 2 years since I lost him. Getting my energy levels back up over the weekend simply gave me the energy to cry. Yesterday afternoon I was so inconsolable that I even logged off Zity and went down to a local beauty spot for an hour. Some really odd and special things happened down there too, but this blog entry is getting too long, so I will leave that until another time.

Once again a sincere thank you to everyone in Kinky Lounge last night - without all you good folks I would be way more of a mess than I currently am.