I could tell you
that we went to southern Spain with friends and it was glorious chaos.
.
I could tell you
that we visited family in the North and West of England and it was some comfort.
.
I could tell you
that we spent a week on the beach in Devon with your sister and her baby and it was redolent of the old times.
.
I could tell you
that our children
swam in the sea
rode rollercoasters
and camped out.
.
Made shows
and revised for their big test.
.
Shopped for new trainers
and played in our old park.
.
Went roller skating
and to the cinema.
.
I could tell you about these
good things.
.
About a summer spent swimming and playing and travelling and visiting and sun and wetsuits and goggles and yes, squabbling, but also hugging and kissing and sandcastles and reading and movies and unchecked screentime and exam prep and pizza and more pizza and dangerous swings and packed lunch after packed lunch and hill walks and board games and campfires and family and friends.
.
I could tell you about all this
and it would be true.
.
But then I would have to tell you it is also true that in each of these places on each of these days amidst all of these good things
I was silently staggered anew by your absence.
.
Beside the pool in Sotogrande
there you weren’t.
.
In the front passenger seat driving under the Dartford Tunnel
there you weren’t.
.
At dinner in your dad’s garden.
On Mothercombe Beach.
Shopping in the Arndale.
Walking up Shining Tor.
Toasting marshmallows.
There you were so resolutely not.
.
I could tell you that all summer long I have planned and co-ordinated and worked and watched in the desperate hope that our children will end each day contented.
.
But then I would also have to tell you that
to me contentedness is now a foreign language.
.
That moments of joy are fleeting.
Vicarious.
Tempered.
.
That I don’t remember how to relax.
And can no longer cry.
.
That my grief for you is such a private form of public secret solitude.
.
I remain stunned at the ability of others to carry on.
Aware perhaps only in fleeting moments of your obvious omission.
Or else I am so consumed with my own despair that I simply don’t see the suffering that surrounds me.
Am being shielded from it.
Selfishly picking away at my own open wounds.
.
Inside a marquee on a campsite somewhere in East Sussex or West Sussex we sit side by side on a wooden bench, us four, listening to a local man sing Must Be Love by Madness which is a song I actually don’t like, watching a young mum in Blundstone boots dancing her toddler around the grass just as you did and we, me and these big bodied broken hearted bruised and battered beautiful babies of ours, must at that moment be the saddest souls in the whole of Sussex.
.
Late at night as the fire dies down to embers and our children lie in our tent resisting sleep until I am safely at their side I look up to try and glimpse a shooting star so I can arbitrarily attach meaning to it then use it as trite symbolism by writing about it here.
But all I see is blackness.
And the flashing red light of a British Airways Airbus A380 that presumably took off from Gatwick a few minutes earlier.
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On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer.
It begins in March 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
On Coping is the story of what happened next.
Such private pain, but your writing of it is public perfection George. Keep writing and we'll keep reading x
Really good writing, George, with deep insights. It must be very tough. Best regards.