Love in the face of impossible odds

I submitted this article to a magazine and then at the last minute I changed my mind about publishing it because the final edited version they wanted to run didn’t feel like my voice. Here it is in its original form.

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There was nothing that could have prepared me for what my husband did. I knew him for nineteen years, we were married for almost sixteen and yet I never had a clue he was so troubled.

Our separation was amiable. There was no fighting or finger pointing just a realization that we no longer belonged together. In March 2010 I moved out of the three bedroom home we shared into a tiny one bedroom flat just a couple of streets away. He knew I was seeing other people and he seemed perfectly fine with it. I was enjoying being a single girl again and internet dating was exciting and fun. Even though I was forty-five years old, I felt like a teenager again.

Before I met Duckfish, I went out with twelve other men. They were all charming gentlemen and made me feel attractive for the first time in years. I wasn’t looking for another relationship but once I met Duckfish I didn’t want to see anyone else. Within days of our first meeting we were a couple.

On a sunny Thursday morning in April 2010, just six weeks after I’d moved out and just ten days after meeting Duckfish, the unthinkable happened. My husband’s work called me concerned that they hadn’t seen him for three days. When I walked into the house we used to share that morning, I found him dead by his own hand. In one instant my entire world changed.

All of a sudden I wasn’t an independent career woman with a charmed life; I was a suicide widow. Duckfish hadn’t signed up for any of this and I thought that he should leave me to my grief, guilt and blame. I couldn’t imagine why any man would want to be with me in this state. I was at my worst and Duckfish was under no obligation to stay.

But he wouldn’t leave my side. He was there when the ambulance officers wheeled my husband’s body out into the ambulance. He was there when the police questioned me. He was there when I forgot to eat and I couldn’t sleep. And he held me when I sobbed and didn’t let me go until I could breathe again.

My friends were worried for me. They couldn’t understand how someone who was a stranger less than two weeks ago could stay in such an impossible situation. They were afraid that it would be too much for him and he would leave, breaking my heart even more. I knew they were right and I tried to push him away. I wanted to shut him out and cope the same way I had for sixteen years – on my own. But he wouldn’t let me.

“I would do all I could to help anyone this happened to,” he said. “You are my girlfriend; of course I’m going to stay with you.”

The difficult part was that I was happier with Duckfish than I had ever been in my whole life. It seemed that my life was full of intense pleasure and intense pain. I felt guilty for feeling joy when the worst thing imaginable had just happened.

Sometimes I think the love Duckfish and I have for each other was shaped by the experience we shared. My perspective was permanently changed the day I realised how quickly life can end. No longer did I worry about the trivia of day to day living but focused on making each moment count. There’s no time to wait for the ‘right’ time when you don’t know how much time you have left. Being honest about my true feelings and risking everything for love gave my life meaning. I wasn’t still in shock when I told Duckfish I loved him for the first time the same day my husband died, I was affirming life and love in the face of death.

Most of the time I feel like we were destined to be together and the circumstances were irrelevant. It is like we were searching for each other our whole lives and once we connected nothing could tear us apart. It is the most open and exposed I have ever been with a man. Once my heart was cracked open, it gave me a greater capacity to love.

Finding our way through the maze of a new relationship was made easier by that terrible day. There was no room for games, agendas or for following the rules set out by the experts who advise the step-by-step process to ensure relationship bliss. From that day on we both agreed that we wouldn’t plan for a future together, we would just live in the present moment. Knowing that right now is the only time we have means each kiss is treasured as the last, each word is burned into our memory and intimacy is precious and sacred. Nothing is taken for granted in a world that could end in an instant.

There is only one thing to hold on to when traumatic events blindside you – loving relationships are all that matter. Instead of carrying the guilt and the pain that result from the choices someone else makes, use that energy to fully embrace the life you have. Kiss your children tenderly, love your partner passionately and tell your parents what they mean to you. Deep authentic connection with our loved ones won’t stop the pain that will come when we eventually lose them (because all relationships have to end through death or through growth), but right here and now it will make being with them more wonderful and our memories more vivid.

Eight days ago Duckfish and I celebrated twenty-one months of being a couple and seventeen months of living together. In two days time I will celebrate surviving the twenty-one months since the suicide of my husband. I’m not celebrating his death, which I still mourn deeply, but I’m celebrating the fact that love can survive even in the face of terrible loss. My heart was shattered by death and has now been healed by being cradled in the hands of a man who taught me that pleasure and pain are all part of living this unpredictable thing called life.

Tagged as: loss, love story, relationships, suicide