Random Email #1 - to W.

Glenn had been dead 4 months
You said you hadn't come to terms with Glenn's being gone. I think it is harder to realise it when you're not in daily or weekly contact. I know when my grandfather died it took me ages to believe it, because I was living so far away and saw him rarely, but when Grandma died, I kind of accepted it immediately because she was living here and I saw her all the time.

Despite that neat theory, however, I find I am further than ever from accepting Glenn's death myself. I just didn't realise it would be this hard. I just didn't realise a lot of things. He is just - so gone - I find myself having crazy conversations in my head where I try to figure out how I can somehow get him back to me. My psychiatrist assures me this is not crazy (and he does know crazy), just the bargaining stage of grief, but it seems pretty screwy to me. I feel like one of those butterflies on a pin - I keep squirming around trying to get out of this nightmare somehow, but there isn't any getting out of it.

He broke my heart when we divorced, but this is much, much worse - and seems to have tangled up both, the divorce and the death together. I feel like such a fool, because I really thought I was over him in the two years since the divorce - that what I felt was sort of a residual fondness for the sake of everything we'd shared before. But as it turns out, that was a comforting illusion. And what haunts me now is, I wish I had realised before he died that I was still in love with him – even the day before, if I could have told him, that last time – but I really didn’t realise it until the moment when I turned to follow his coffin out of the church, and it felt as if they were carrying my whole life away from me. It was all I could do to restrain myself from turning into another cliché and throwing myself on top of it. Yet I had seen him lying still and quiet in that coffin the day before and I knew perfectly well that what was in there wasn’t Glenn any longer. But it was all I had left. If only I could have told him I loved him – or if I could just believe he knew it, but I know he can’t have, because even under the best of conditions he had trouble believing I loved him – that anyone loved him, I think. God, I would give anything to have him back, even for an hour – what you said about his voice being quiet now really hit me, because there are so many things I miss, things I’d come to take for granted – if I could hear that husky voice again, look into his eyes, feel his arms around me just once more, I think I would give anything – you know that line from Me and Bobby McGee: I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday …

I’ve been re-reading all our old letters to each other – most were written in 1980 when we were apart, the year we got engaged – and all it’s done is reminded me how great it used to be between us, and also, how much he loved me once. That comes through really clearly to me now – right from the very beginning, while I was still skittish and teenage and neurotic and unpredictable, he was always steadfast in his feelings for me. I wish I could have remembered that and been more patient with him when he became irrational and difficult and acted as if I were the worst in the world. I should have known he didn’t really mean it. I wish I knew what his feelings were towards me these past few years. All the things he did for me – paying to have my house airconditioned, washing my car, buying me lovely gifts from the boys – lots of little and big things, which others have pointed out were not usual behaviour for an ex-husband, but I assumed he was just being decent and kind, because he was like that. Now I don’t know. And will never know.

I know traditionally the children are meant to be a ‘comfort’ but I’m afraid that isn’t true. I love them for themselves of course, but having them makes no difference to how I feel about Glenn being gone. I just want him back. In fact every time I look at them, I feel like howling: How could you leave me? How can I do this alone?

You see, I have become a Mills and Boon romantic cliché. This is what I’m reduced to!