I used to find and still do sometimes that it can sometimes feel less lonely to be alone than to be with people without that special some-one by your side - things like weddings or familly events but it used to be everything even the every day and banal things shopping.
I also felt like you why him not me - me who now has no purpose or use to anyone else - at the time i also had just got an empty nest - and he was no longer here to care for either in fact after a life of pretty much being a carer for others to having no-one who needed me except the dog - i had no idea how to be anything else.My job wasnt particularly useful to anyone but the company and it wasnt as though i was not replaceable there either.He was the confident one - the one people were drawn too the one who could entertain others,the one who solved practical problems round the house and the one i came home to knowing i was unconditionally loved.
I went from flying through fridays work so i was ready to leave as soon as the clock allowed me to rush home for the weekend, to being the last to leave - dragging out going home looking in closed shop windows to avoid the moment of opening the door to the empty house.
I started making friday night treat night - not anything big but chocolates a film a candle lightt bath buying myself flowers - just little things that could never replace him being there but made friday nights a little less awful.
At some point i imagined a conversation if we ever met again in another life - the one where he asked what i did with the rest of my life and my only reply was i mourned for you. - It would be a short conversation but if i couldn't see a point to my life maybe i could at least try and live it for him - be his eyes on the world - so the alternative conversation was one where i could say "i went back to the places we loved to go - the dolphins are still around the bay - the one you adopted for me has calves now - remember we said we would walk up cader idris - well i did that and i wished you were next to me the views were amazing -and the ridge was terrifying so i wont be doing it again . Remember when we saw that gorge zipping on tv and you said you would love to do it and i said you were on your own with that one - well i did it for you - you would have loved it - i didnt but i saw the rainbow in the waterfall i always wanted to see not from the angle i envisaged but thankyou for making that happen for me . - i havnt changed that much i dug another pond and your stig of the dump nickname came to mind when i was doing it but also when i went and swam in morecombe bay and came out plastered in mud. Work still does my head in but i am using the skills i learned there to help a schools garden project in Africa and thats where all your tools went that i couldnt use i knew you wouldnt mind if some-one else could use them .- You would have laughed when i learned how to clear a u bend i was so full of pride then tipped the water back in the sink before i put it back on - what a fool . little -x (grandkids did/ said this - and older one is trying to get in the brigade now remember when he sitched the outside tap on hosed your car and tried to clean it with a pan scrub."
Its like an ongoing conversation in my head even now - and its not about "living in the past" or "not letting go" being unhealthy as some people think we all find different ways to cope in the end and for me it is taking him forward with me and increasingly with some of this stuff i started to feel i wont need to tell him what i have done because he has been by my side in some way all along and thats ok too - because the conversation will be shared experiences as they once were and its still better than the one where i have nothing to say except i missed you.- Maybe there will never actually be a conversation and maybe i have been fooling myself all along, but its still not wasted because it is what eventually got me out of the house restored some self confidence forced me to make some kind of life for myself and still drives me even now 10 years on.