January 9th 2012 I start this not knowing quite why. 2am I cannot sleep it came to me to write. 2012 a New Year in which Lettie will not have been alive. I did not want this year to start but could not stop it as I could not stop Lettie’s death. Why I have to continue to live is still a puzzle to me, there is no purpose, no pleasure, no anticipation of things being better. I have no blueprint for this, no map to guide me and I am completely lost and blind. I stumble constantly groping about for something to hold onto. The light went out when she died, I lost my way and it is still as dark as night. The pain never leaves it sits like a lead weight inside me. Sometimes it literally takes my breath way making my chest heave. I find myself sighing all the time, not sure what for but I am compelled to do it. Most of the time the pain is deep, visceral as if something was pulling my heart down through my body to meet my abdomen. That feels like the place my heart wants to be deep in the core of my belly hiding and being held tight. To be nurtured and protected the way Lettie was before she left my body. Perhaps I yearn to have her back where she was safe. This is the most powerful pain and it comes from the abject misery of missing Lettie beyond belief. Not a fleeting missing but a missing so profound that it draws noises from me that I have only heard once before and it was Lettie making them, sounds which come from a place too painful and raw for words. Other times it is hard and sharp and I have to shake my head to stop it. This pain is connected to her actual dying. The pain of knowing she was terrified, that she didn’t want to die and I couldn’t make it better. I know it was not my fault but I cannot stop wanting to have protected her. I see her in the bed at the hospice, unable to speak or move. I remember the last time she squeezed my hand to let me know she wanted to lie down. I had no idea this would be the last communication between us and wish I had held her longer. I am not blaming myself I am simply wishing with every fibre of my body that I had held onto that moment. Then my mind races like a film fast forwarded through the last few days, sitting holding Lettie’s hand waiting for her to die. These moments always end with the nurse’s words ‘she’s gone sweetheart’ ringing in my ears and as then my knees go weak and I want to scream, no, no. no please don’t let her be dead I can’t bear it, please, please let me have her back. Another level of pain is the grief I feel at what Lettie went through and lost by being so ill and dying so young. I look at photos of her looking so full of life, happy and bright. These moments rock me as it seems impossible that she is no longer alive, that she is dead. When I look at her Facebook page and see all the pictures from her travels she comes alive again and I momentarily forget that she is not here, I get lost in the joy of seeing her face, expressions and postures all of which are so familiar to me they could be my own. The down side of this fleeting joy is that inevitably she dies all over again as I come back to reality. I cannot spend all my time looking at photos as a way out of this hell. I do not think that I am holding on, not letting her go, it is because I really know that she has gone that the pain and devastation is so deep. I feel alone and isolated whenever I leave the house. The world outside terrifies me. I no longer have the confidence to tackle what might be thrown at me, be it a missed train, a long queue, the butcher not having lamb shoulder; anything sends me to the edge of madness. My logical brain tells me that the depth of what I am feeling is not appropriate to express, that I have to behave reasonably but the strength of the feeling knocks me off balance. Trying to hold myself steady and balanced leaves me wiped out and empty. It is, in that moment of trying to pull myself back from the edge, absolute madness. I know I am angry but I cannot express it. The rage is too powerful and there’s no way to express it. I am full of rage at the unjustness, the pointlessness, the devastation, the loss, the meaninglessness of life (especially mine), other people’s inability to help and my inability to ask. It feels to me that in this mad modern world no one has the time to stop and risk the challenge of encountering real feelings. I do not know what to do with this rage, where to put it or how to let it out so it just rages round and round inside me leaking out occasionally and usually inappropriately. Each of these phases of grief cracks me to my core leaving me fractured and fragile. Sometimes they come as a story bang, bang, bang one after the other and I am wrung out, limp and breathless. Other times they come singly and stay for a while like a hangover making me feel ill and poisoned. I try to ‘get on with my life’ but I don’t know what that means. What is my life? I do not know what I need, I do not know what I want (apart from the obvious), and therefore I do not have a clue how to go about getting it. I do know that what I may fleetingly register I need or want changes with the feelings, sometimes I want to be dead, sometimes to turn the clock back and do it differently; sometimes I want to be alone, sometimes I want someone with me, a lot of the time I want a mother (not my mother)to hold me as I held Lettie. Most of the time I just don’t know anything except Lettie is dead. All roads lead to this point and so I go round and round lurching from one level of pain to another like a billiard ball that’s been hit so hard it ricochets round the edge of the table cushions. Where does this leave me? It leaves me at 4am on the 9th January 2012 in the same place I started, with absolutely no idea.