Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
Fleetwood Mac – February 1977
My sister brought Rumours back home with her when she returned from her first job in New York.
We bought the Fleetwood Mac ‘White Album’ the very next week.
To my great delight, over three decades later she’s coming to see the band live with me at London’s Wembley Arena tonight.
Liz has been there, all that time — through good years and bad, in the happy times and the very darkest days of all.
It’s a great skill in life, I think, to be close when you’re needed, whilst standing more tactfully distant when required. And it’ll be quite an evening, drawing that circle around us while fulfilling a lifetime’s ambition together, after all this time.
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Categories: Chapter 31 · Chapters 30-39 · Fleetwood Mac · bereavement · breast cancer · family · grief · health · hope · love · recovery · soundtrack
July 8th 1997
A day trip to France to meet the Brittany government. Rachel was brilliant as always, arriving at dawn as I left for the airport and staying until very late.
On my way home there was a huge thunderstorm, the motorway was blocked, and so the taxi took me back across the Downs.
Had it really only been two summers before when I’d driven that way home from Gatwick? Emily had been learning to walk, with William soon to be on the way.
It seemed such a short time ago, and yet so far away. Just the blink of an eye, and that life had gone completely.
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Categories: Chapter 30 · Chapters 30-39 · bereavement · breast cancer · family · grief · health · hope · love · recovery · shock · single parents
On our way home we visited Jane, Jenny’s friend from ante-natal, who had now returned from Hong Kong to live in Wiltshire, too.
Jane’s daughter Orla was three that day, and it was a fine party, with toddlers and mums and dads everywhere. I found it incredibly hard to be there, alone like that, but it was worth it all the same.
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Categories: Chapter 30 · Chapters 30-39 · bereavement · breast cancer · children · friends · grief · health · love · relationships · shock · single parents
June 28th – 29th 1997
The next weekend we stayed with Sal and Tom in Wiltshire. They live in an idyllically peaceful spot, and it is great to go walking in the fields around their cottage.
But despite the restful setting, Emily or William would always wake at six, and there still seemed so much to do. It left very little time to relax – just half an hour or so in the whole weekend when I escaped on a pounding run across the Cotswolds, letting it all out through the aggression under my feet.
We all went for a pleasant walk on Sunday, but unfortunately when we returned, Sal and Tom picked a fight. Tom stormed off, and Sal just sat down.
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Categories: Chapter 30 · Chapters 30-39 · bereavement · breast cancer · children · family · grief · health · love · parenting · relationships · single parents
Most amazing of all the gifts from the party was a whole album from Karen, Jenny’s best friend at Oxford.
It proved to be a fascinating record of Jenny’s first year at college, before we’d started going out together.
Buried in there unexpectedly, I found a photograph taken in my kitchen at the ‘Under 7’s’ party where Jenny and I had got together for the very first time. There I was, in my schoolboy tie, standing next to Jenny in her short skirt, with another friend on my other arm.
I had no recollection of that picture being taken (it must have been an even better evening than I remembered). But a few minutes later, Jenny and I were snogging on the stairs and it had all started.
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Categories: Chapter 30 · Chapters 30-39 · bereavement · breast cancer · grief · health · hope · love · recovery · relationships · shock
Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you
Caught up in circles – confusion is nothing new
If you’re lost you can look – and you will find me
Time after time
Cyndi Lauper 1985
June 23rd – 27th 1997
After the party, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
I had survived the day, and it had gone as Jenny would have wanted.
In looking forward to the event over all the months before, and in writing the invitations late into the night at home, I’d been aware of fulfilling Jenny’s wishes, and of wanting to draw her life to some sort of close, for her, for her friends and for our families, but most of all for me.
I knew it would be an immensely emotional day, but I did think that afterwards maybe I’d feel some sort of release and even a permission to move on again.
But the following week, back at home, it all hit me again.
And rather than looking forwards, now I found myself looking backwards instead, for all of the best reasons.
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Categories: Chapter 30 · Chapters 30-39 · bereavement · breast cancer · friends · grief · health · hope · love · recovery · relationships · shock
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Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
