jmgoyder

It’s a month now since Anthony died and I still can’t quite believe it. I know that if I go into the nursing home there will be somebody else in his room so maybe that will confirm things for me. I have such strange impulses like wanting to dig up the soil on his grave and open the coffin just to make sure he really is dead. Just before the funeral, Ming and I viewed his body, not to say goodbye, but (for me, at least) to make sure that he wasn’t just sleeping. I realise that these impulses are totally irrational but they persist nevertheless. Time will fix this eventually.
I want Anthony back so much that the feeling of longing is inside every breath I take and hold. Remembering to breathe normally is something I am now re-learning. I want him back the way he was on the Friday before he died – eating, smiling, squeezing my hand, watching television.
Anthony had been ill with Parkinson’s Disease Dementia for so long that, until now, I had forgotten his robust energy, loud laugh, barbecued steak, and the way he used to love looking at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know he had Dementia but he did know he had Parkinson’s Disease, but he would always reassure me that he was getting better. And I would always agree of course.
It was so fast – Anthony’s death. The aspirational pneumonia was loud in his gurgling breath and his forehead was so hot to touch. I vaguely remember wetting a small towel and placing it on his forehead to cool him down. His eyes were slits and I wasn’t sure if he could hear me saying how much I loved him. I hope he didn’t hear the fear in my voice….
There is no relief for me that Anthony has died because he was never a burden of responsibility for me and those last five – nearly six – years in the nursing home were filled with joy and fun. Our love for each other was so gigantic, I struggle to find words to describe it – it was like some sort of massive water slide, or maybe even a parachute jump, a leap into an unknown that I now know.
I said, in the eulogy, that nobody ever had a bad word to say against Anthony because I had forgotten how he broke my heart when I was too young to understand why. I remember calling him a ‘selfish pig’ at one point. Before we were married, he admitted that he, too, had fallen in love-at-first-sight, but he was 41 and I was 18, and he respected me.
But Anthony’s mother, Gar, knew. She would say little, suggestive things to me and hint at the promise of a relationship with her son. Her last words to me “Look after Anthony,” just before she died, had a resonance unfelt for many years.
What does a person like me do now? The absence of Anthony in the here-now is like an icy wind-tunnel and I feel fractured/split/injured. And, yes, I want him back, I want him back.
The love of my life has died and I feel so lost without you, Ants. But I can also feel the warmth of your smiling encouragement, and we have Ming – like a clone of you – the most beautiful gift we gave each other.
It’s a month now since Anthony died and I still can’t quite believe it.