Dear Alicia

Dear Alicia,
Today, the 24th June, is your birthday. As with all the previous ‘birthday’ letters I wrote you I will not be so indelicate as to record here which birthday it is, but only repeat that we are now the same age again. But, of course, this birthday letter is very different from all the others I have written you over the years. This year I cannot put it into your hands, or watch your reaction as you read it, or then give you a birthday hug and kiss--- and the pain of not being able to do even those simple things is almost more than I can bear.
I told you once that I found it easier to write down what I felt about you, than to say it, and that my feelings always seemed more permanent and real written rather than spoken. Now, of course, I don’t need to write, or even speak any words because your spirit is so close to mine, so much a part of my own, that my thoughts and feelings are yours even more intimately than before…. and often before I am aware of them myself. But on this birthday Alicia, the first since you died, it helps me to continue the practice of writing you a letter, opening my heart, and recording what I feel.
I love you so much Alicia that even my grief at not being able to see you, hear you, or touch you; this terrible unrealisable yearning that so often prompts me to cry out loud, even that urges me to reach out and love you even more…. To love you until I can finally become ‘Love in your heart!’
For there I know I will be safe, for there I am held in unselfish and, now, perpetual love. Yes, there is pain, but there is no fear, no uncertainty. Even the physical chasm that separates us, binds us ever closer to the truth and reality of eternal love. Not just Gods love for you, or Gods love for me, but most of all Gods love for ‘we two as one.’
In those final days and hours in the hospital when I was able to stay beside you and hold your hand, tell you how much I loved you, and tell you why I knew that God would never really separate us, did you really understand? Because what separates us is only physical things, what unites us is our spirits now prompted even more urgently to reach across whatever divided us.
With all my heart I hope you did, but forgive me if I cry when I feel your spirit close within my heart. it’s the absence of physical things that prompts my tears… your loving spirit is closer now than it has ever been. Physically I have to let go of your hand, but I know from what you told the nurse that your spirit will never release its hold on my heart.
‘Birthdays’ I know are usually celebrated here in ‘time’ but, Alicia, enjoy your first birthday in Gods eternal kingdom. Enjoy it darling with your mum and dad, and all those you loved here on earth whose spirits went ahead of you, but …. reach back also, behind you, to where I still stand on this lonely, unseeing shore, looking out to sea and waiting for the tide of love to carry me after you.
Happy birthday luv….. Alan. XXX ( no need for more this time!!)

Alicia

I haven’t felt like putting up a post since Alicia was diagnosed with lung cancer 18 months ago. Finally, after a long struggle with the disease, she died in Galway University hospital at 2.30 am on Monday, 31st. May 2010. As committed Christians we neither of us believe that our spirits cease to exist when our bodies die, and so I do not believe I have ‘lost’ Alicia. Her spirit is with me now , and she is in my mind and heart just as much as she was when I could see her, hear her voice, reach out and take her hand in mine, and give her a hug. My loss is not being able to see her, hear her, or hold her, and it is that loss that causes me the pain. I have photographs of her to remind me what she looked like, and they are a comfort even if they can never replace the real thing… which I believe now waits for me in Heaven, and I’m putting two of my favourite photo’s of her up into the blog.

The first was taken when she was 21 years old, on the day she graduated from Manchester University, and the second was taken in our garden a few years before she became ill and shows her doing what she always loved doing…. playing with some of our cats in our garden.

It is in the garden that I can feel her presence at my shoulder most strongly and it is going to be my aim, in the future to try and develop this garden in the way she would have wanted it. Not as some sort of memorial, but as a continuing testimony to how much I love her.

I’m also going to try to start painting again,…. another activity she encouraged me in and which, since she became ill I have abandoned. For some reason I don't understand I'm having trouble uploading pictures at the moment. Hopefully I'll remember how to do it shortly!