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!