Dear Alex....Hope is the key......

February 29^th 2012

Dear Alex,

Well after breaking up completely yesterday, the smell I told you to remind me about, yes, it was all over a smell. I found some incense sticks I had in my suitcase, brought back from France, and as I had not yet unpacked my case, and did this yesterday, I stumbled across them, and lit one.

It was a smell that reminded me of France; times we were together, happy times. Out of the blue, I was on my knees, sobbing, wailing into a cushion.

It was totally unprompted, and it shocked me that a smell could drag up such potent images of you and me as we were, of France and times together, times that were which I have just had to block in order to cope, carry on....and I just cried until I was nearly sick.

But from this, I realised my problem, I am struggling to ‘hope’. Looking to the future at the moment, I have so many hanging doubts, niggling Drs’ voices telling me you’ll never be the man I once knew, never recuperate more than you have. My problem is, that through the move, I have had to start again, without you. In a strange place, struggling to get done all that I have to, and doing it so alone. Family help out, babysit at times, but I have no real emotional support, as no one can do that, they cannot tell me it’ll ‘all be alright’ as no one knows, and at the end of the day, you were my shoulder to cry on, my support, my rock, the one and only one I ever turned to. And now I can’t. Hope has waned dramatically for me in the past few weeks. It is going to be difficult, but I have decided I just have to keep that, the hope I had in France, which kept me going, kept you going, I believe to a large extent brought you out of your coma, got you through. I CANNOT and must not give up hoping.

I resolved myself today and decided to hope, despite all I am going through, all the doubts, the anxieties, the fears, I HAVE to keep that hope alive and strong.

Being with you today as our nephew Bert and fiancée Emily babysat, we laugh, you laugh with a noise, you smile, you comb (well, try to) your own hair, and I make you wipe your own dribble up with your right hand. I make you do all I can for yourself, I push you to do it, telling you I’ve had it now, five months in bed is way too long, I never signed up for this, get a move on at getting better,  you whoos, I tell you and your smile back at me melts me. I am so in love with you, and I just have to have you back.

I know how long this takes, the weeks become months, which will become years, but I know the fight you have, and I cannot lose hope that one day I will be in your arms, in the same bed as you again. I won’t let the doubts overtake, I will fight them internally, and pray you come back to me.

That smell will one day, not make me cry, but as we smell it together in OUR bedroom again, it will make me smile, maybe cry with relief! But not weep through fear and loss and despair, grief.

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, the hardest thing you have ever had to do, the hardest thing the kids have ever had to do, and I promise them everyday, as I explain you may not be there in body and presence, but that the love you have always and will always have for them is so strong and alive, that it is inside them, helping them grow, keeping them strong, and making them believe Daddy will be back.

I have to do this for me too, despite.

Thank you for the amazing time we had tonight, and I will keep the hope alive, no matter how hard it may be at times when I see you in your current position

I love you my hero and ever strong in mind man,

Me xxxxxxxxxxxxx