A strangely quiet day

I know I've been a bit bonkers recently what with offers for books, kids all home, waiting, waiting, other projects, escape artist chickens... but today is different. Today I woke up subdued, remembering Steve, who was once my husband, and who died when Carey was a baby. Anniversaries are hard, and sad, and drag you back to the past for a long moment. When I was someone different, that's for sure.

We were looking after our terminally ill daughter when he died. He'd been admitted to hospital with a  'chest infection' and for ten days, this cloud of awful foreboding formed in me, this terror. On the eleventh day, he died. Then they told me that they'd got it wrong, and he had had leukaemia all along. I remember my brother and I raising that question over the previous ten days but both of us were dismissed. So he died. He probably would have died anyway. He was thirty-three years old, and was a warm, funny man who adored his children and me. We were together since I was 17, and married for 12 years. He was terribly missed by all of us. Now some of the people who knew him best are dead - his father, my sister, our daughter, and with each person he fades a little more. So today, even though family and books are important, a little corner of me needs to be quiet, and remember someone who completely believed in me, and told me so every day.