"I have just arose from my bed after 15 hours in it. My body is still very painful and I have been sick this morning with the effects of the chemicals inside. Hopefully, this feeling of absence of wellness, lack of sleep and too much pain will gradually subside now that my chemo programme has come to the end of this stage.Thank you all for your daily thoughts and prayers. Over the past week, I have been having all sorts of weird dreams; even during the twenty minutes and half hour of sleep I have managed to snatch during intervals of the night. As with all dreams, they are scrambled together in a ball of nonsense that has no relevance to one's own life. I thought I'd give you it anyway."
'Never was a baby so loved as I loved little Billy. Never was a smile capable of making cold houses warm and hard hearts want to hug. From the moment that he entered the world and gave out his first cry of 'Horrah! I made it,' my heart skipped a beat and never regained its rhythm of regularity.
I'll never forget our son's first day at nursery school. When we went in he gripped my hand so tightly, and yet, within a matter of minutes he had abandoned me in exchange for a ball of Plasticine and a wobbly spinning top. Then, there was the annual 'Nativity Play' in which the teacher had to create a special role for him to play the character of the laughing jackass. I still recall the bunch of daffodils he bought me from his first wage packet when he started work. They have remained pressed to my heart ever since.
I sweetly recall other land marks in his life, like passing his driving test, bringing his first sweetheart, Rosemary, home for tea and then going on to marry her in the same church where you and I were wed. Then, when he gave me my first grandson and I saw him for the very first time, I didn't need to take photographs to capture the moment, because I had stored it in my memory since the day he was born. The facial features of you and your son and grandson were identical at birth and I found myself bringing you back into the world once more, back to life when little Billy entered this life so many years ago. I gave him your name and he inherited the same infectious smile that you had and which his son now possesses. He spreads this happy contagion wherever he goes.
Oh, how I wish that you could have seen him on that first day, Bill, as I left him in the nursery school. There was one mere moment of hesitation while he gripped my hand ever so tightly with his little fingers before a spotty-faced four-year-old girl pushed him to the ground laughing as she yelled, 'You can't catch me!' You should have seen little Billy's respond. He was off after her like a hound chasing a rabbit.'
'Oh, Bill, why did you have to go and die on us when we were at the pinnacle of our family happiness and I was expecting little Billy. We were in the magic moments of parental delight where money doesn't matter and everything for the future is possible. You still had so much to give the world when you were taken from it by a reckless lorry driver. I turned out to be an excellent mum for little Billy, who isn't 'little' anymore and stands six foot two inches tall. My friends keep telling me that thirty-five years is far too long to be trapped in grief and that I should get myself out more as I'm still young enough to find another. But that's it in a nutshell, Bill; I don't want any other and never will! You will be the only man I will ever love.
I'll be up to put some fresh daffodils on your grave again next week. I miss you. I always will. Your loving wife, Mary.'" William Forde: June 13th, 2017.
(An idea partly stolen from a dream last night that I may use for a future story to write after my cancer treatment regime has been completed and I have recovered somewhat).