After I had got upset on Chris's birthday I made sure I didn't spend mine alone. I spent the morning in the charity shop and Tam and Kelvin treated me to a night out at the cinema to watch the 'Dad's Army' film. Tracey was working, but Jordan came too and we had a takeaway pizza before we left. It certainly helped to have company. That is two more firsts out of the way. It would have been lovely if Chloe and Tom had been home, but we had a nice chat during the day.
I guess another first will be Valentine's Day. In recent years we never celebrated in any fancy way, but we always bought each other a card and had a nice meal.
Something I am always grateful for is that Chris always kept a diary, he even had me write it for him that last week of his life, when he could no longer write. For some reason the day he died I just wrote The End, it strangely seemed to be the right thing to say. He was never sentimental and just wrote the facts, I can look back at them and see the dates when we first went out and when he proposed. I was never good at writing diaries and I don't remember those specific dates, so reading them now and then, filtering out the mundane farming info, are quite comforting. I have his diaries dating back to childhood and reading him write 'Done mentals today' mental arithmetic, really makes me giggle. His usually ended up with him rushing out to the farm and his beloved ponies. I often think in another life Chris would have loved to have been a showjumper, he really did love horses.
I still have flashbacks to the time Chris died, but I am also starting to remember more happier times, that seemed to be blocked to me for a while. He rarely got stressed or angry and he made me laugh so much and it is good to remember those times.
Before he was ill I made a half hearted attempt at being a pet portrait artist, lack of ambition and fear meant it didn't succeed too well and once Chris was diagnosed I refused to spend hours painting when I could be spending time with him, so I stopped. It was always a cruel irony that MND allowed us to spend precious time together, whereas the farm always kept us apart. Since Chris died I have started to paint again, half heartedly to start with, but when I did it was the perfect distraction. I signed up for a watercolour course and that has fired me up to paint more with my oils too. I have a plan that should allow me to take my art forward again next year and I think Chris would approve. I have started to get excited again about something and that hasn't really happened in a long time.
My sister-in-law and I are also organising a MND charity event for the Autumn, that is giving me something to focus on too, I may not be able to run a marathon or jump out of a plane, but I'm not too bad at organising. Asking local businesses if they can help and finding out some have read my blog is very humbling and I have already got a few nice lots for the auction side of the event.
It would be very easy to let grief swallow me up and sometimes it does, especially during the lonely nights, but I know Chris would not want that, he could never bear so see me cry, I said a while ago that I need to live the life I have especially because Chris had his taken from him. Wherever he is I want him to be proud of us all, to be smiling down on us content that we are making the best of things, but always knowing that we will love and miss him forever.
Moving on is part of survival, but it does not mean that you can't hold on too, My love for my darling boy is embeded in my genome, that will never change, I will never stop missing him and I have to believe as I move on with life, that he is there with me sharing every step.
