'I am here for you'

I cleared out rooms of Dig's things.

Hoarding temperament? Yes. Much.

I wonder if we'd sold this house (been here 30 years). I wonder a) How he would have moved all that shit and b) Who would have said, 'No problem! Stack your boxes in the bathroom!'

Of course, when you love someone, you turn a blind eye to 18 boxes of cables going back 30 years stacked in a bathroom. (Incidentally, the bathroom was made unusable mostly thanks to 18 boxes of cables stacked next to tool shelves propped against a wall.)

And then I stayed through a belly full of more than everything else.

Once, Dig said to me, 'Only you could love me'. I replied, 'No, you are a lovely person'. But I think, in truth, only I could have loved him with the huge scope that I did. I gave thirty years of range and depth, possibilities and impossibilities, grudges and resentments, forgivenesses and tolerances. Hatred and love, hope and despair. There were times when I laughed so much in his company the world turned round us. There were times when we both would have done away with that spinning wheel in the snap of a finger. We didn't. Brief Encounter? The truth is, the responsibility of giving up his daughters, home and family would have been too great a consequence to commit.

Then I sat 24 hours, every day, 10 days at the hospice, by Dig's side, breathing the last seconds of life before us.

Later, when it is all done, all gone, I catch up with messages on his phone. Some are from family, some are from groupies; there were star-struck types, parasitic types, flatterers and the career advancers that Dig collected. One message read, 'I'm here for you'. I reward our family with a hollow laugh. Yes, you are. In your synthetic Wechat/WhatsApp landscapes, you do indeed slip away with all your final nothingness, into the shallow depths of a plastic screen.

Thirty years got me the truth of my public vows. I never betrayed them. My wedding ring was made stronger than any transitory sparkle bought in temporary fits. My truth is, I fell in love quickly and I never lost that love. Through all the good and bad, regardless of others, I wanted my husband: no one else came close. My desire was thwarted, often by others more manipulative than me; sometimes by my husband who allowed himself to be easily led. But when I could not have him by me, I was in sorrow and loss. His absence gave me my reason for this record to exist. This is my truth.

For my vows, I was here when we lived on virtually nothing. I was here as a partner in inspiration and aspiration when we created our company and brought home contracts. I was here through health; I was here for sickness. I never left. I stayed. I loved. Nights, weeks, months of constant watchfulness, sleeping on floors besides beds, driving at midnight and at 3am backwards and forwards to hospitals. Thirty years brought me the care of vomit, urine and faeces. Thirty years threw me the harrowing knowledge that Dig's judgement was fragmenting under addictive painkillers, where he would never know the problem of withdrawal. Thirty years got me dealing with his stories, confessions and truths. Thirty years got me head, heart, family. Thirty years got me the past and the future; being here fully, totally, physically, immersively, viscerally, with every emotion wrung from me, holding the last hand to life and the true, incontrovertible right to claim, 'I am here for you'.

I am here.

Love in the time of chemotherapy