My Journal

 

When my wife Cro was diagnosed with lung cancer on July 21st 2022, I started writing a journal to myself. It is simply called 'July 21st'. I have never stopped writing it and it is now approaching 150,000 words. It is not for publication, nor will it ever be. That is not its purpose.

It is, I suppose, a diary of sorts. When you get that kind of news, you have an urge to share it with someone, just to make the enormity of it a bit smaller by pushing it slightly away from you and into someone else's consciousness. I did that of course, and the very first night I went round to some good friends of ours and poured my heart out (and some whisky in). You know who you are, and thank you. 

But I also knew that there was so much that I wanted to say that it would slightly overwhelm all my friends and sometimes at very early hours in the morning. So I started doing what I think some people call 'journalling'. I understand that quite a lot of people use this when either they or a loved one gets a diagnosis. My journal has segued from one to the other. It is simply the process of using writing to get your feelings down on paper or on screen so that they are not just between your ears. I have found it very useful in practical and in emotional ways. And now it is very good for me to try to remember how Cro and I felt during that year (and how I have felt since that year) and see that my memory of it is borne out by what I wrote at the time. 

Because it was an unvarnished and full account of my feelings, it also includes frustrations and anger and things that might upset other people. This is not the only reason that it will not be for publication, but it is an extra one, and I was grateful for the ability to be honest with myself. 

I at first thought that I would only write about the time that Cro was ill but I realised when she died that it was a bit silly to do that. The whole next part of my life would include Cro in it, so why not continue and record my world after she died, as if to tell her what had happened? So on July 5th 2023, instead of referring to Cro as 'she' and 'her' when I wrote about her, I started writing directly to her and I still do whenever there is something I remember about our life together or whenever I do or see something that I think would interest her. I know full well that lots of people who have lost their partner do the same. A friend of mine in that situation used the phrase 'Cheating at Solitaire', which I think describes it well. And her partner died about twenty years ago. 

And the journal is for my eyes only, because that is its purpose. And when I know that my end is approaching I will simply delete it. By then its purpose will have been served, and if you want to describe the purpose maybe you could say it was to make me whole, to stop me fragmenting. I know there is a natural human urge to make a consistent story of ones life, and I can see the risk in this narrative becoming a substitute for the truth. But to me it is tremendously liberating to get things off my chest, even if I am only talking to myself. And it is good to remember feelings that I had forgotten or see again feelings that I remember only too well. 

Even though the journal is not for the public, there are certainly chunks of it that are libel-free and not too upsetting. In fact most of it is, to be honest. So I am posting a little chunk below, which I wrote in April 2024, nine months after Cro died, to give a flavour of it:

I was also happy this morning when looking at those pictures to find myself smiling and laughing as I remembered things that you and we had said and done. Which is another good anniversary. The first time I laughed when I thought about you, as opposed to merely smiling. But this is what I tell people – the life that we are and the life that we have is measured out in all our contact and connections and interactions, and it therefore exists outside our individual experiences. We actually exist in that space between ourselves and all the people we have loved, hated, made love with or slated, stroked or shoved, got turned on by or bored by. And that is where we live.

Another thing which had always filled you with wonder, even before you were diagnosed, is the miracle of death, where all these trillions of connections and memories and experiences of which we are composed can dissolve into dust when we die. How can all this beauty cease to be? Spoiler: it’s because without death, decay and change, beauty cannot exist. This too will pass. I remember that you were thinking the same about your father’s beautiful mind, which started to empty in a terrifying avalanche before he was even dead. But that is the way we pass, my love. And that is the way that you have already gone and which I will follow. But the glory, the glory, is there in its passing.