Just remembered the last one Sleep in a comfy clean bed:-)
So pleased to hear your news Gill xx
Sorry to hear that I hope she is pain free and wish her family the strength to cope with whatever the next few days or weeks bring Gill xx
Who suddenly gets a bad outbreak of mm? We always had the same health insurance as "normal" people when travelling to France Bon Voyage Gill xx
Hey Sue
As long as you don't mind dogs and are willing to take turns driving you're on!!
It is basic and gorgeous Stephen always said if you can get clean, cook and I am sure there was one more. Well I have a great shower cubicle here in Orpington and, believe me, it is getting harder and harder to climb over the huge edge of the bath in France but I manage. The kitchen is very comfortable, the "den" is "don't fall asleep or you will be here all night" and the beds are snuggle down. You're welcome any time
Love from Gill xx
PS the rest is huge but needs a great deal if TLC
I am so sorry for your loss. I don't log in very often now but I do think of you all. My husband died last September aged 57
The pain refuses to go but I cope somehow. You are right it is not a relief for those of us who are left. I guess that is just our natural human selfishness
Love from Gill
Oh Dai
What a beautiful message. Needless to say I cried, but not from grief. I cried from the knowledge that, over the years, I have had so much support from all my cyber friends on this site. People who I will never meet but are there for anybody who needs support (as I hope I have been)
Stephen read every post and had his say through me. (he took at least 10 minutes to type 2 words and then they would be spelt wrongly:-)but he always dictated a darn good business letter and had a vast vocabulary. Like most couples we relied on each other to do the things we weren't too good at and took on the things that the other person found hard.
As for Charles Dickens I always found him hard going but then, knowing I was an avid reader, my father gave me Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island as a 7 year old and couldn't understand why I didn't like it (I was an only child and as much as Dad adored me he was 1 of 5 boys!!)
Fortunately I had a cousin much older than me who, every Christmas, gave me a board game and a classic book that was adapted for children, with lots of beautiful illustrations. Who wrote Heidi?
The board games are all in France. Scoop, Touring England, Old fashioned Monopoly, Cluedo etc. No plastic in sight, all proper metal pieces although the boxes are a little frayed around the edges. Stephen and I had great fun trying to thrash each other, dissolving into fits of laughter, calling it a draw and pouring another glass of vin rouge. The books sadly vanished into the ether. Lent and never returned.
Well that was quite a fun walk down memory lane for me and I am dry eyed so maybe I am taking tiny steps forward.
I hope you are all keeping well.
Much love, and thanks to you all
Gillxxx
Good luck and Good health to you all.
But please remember how long you lived is not so important as how well you lived, how much you and those around you enjoyed your life and the legacy you left behind
Stephen died last September, young, needed and missed by all who loved him.
Please don't feel as though it is all doom and gloom Eve but "seize the day" Every single day that you have with Slim is wonderful. I wish I could remember every second (yes including disagreements. Stubborn beast that Stephen was)
None of us know when we will go. Death and taxes are the only guaranteed thing in this life.
There never were any elephants in the room in this house. Stephen was always upfront with mm to anybody that asked. Glossed over "how long" and got on with it
I always had a terrible longing for "just as many days is as possible please with Stephen".
I have no idea if it is better to have some sort of forecast as to when your life will end, or the knock on the door telling you that there has been an accident ???
Personally I will be eternally grateful that I was there at his end, he was the same person that I had always known and it wasn't a knock on the door.
I miss him every minute but am glad that he went without pain, was himself, was not fearful and just "Stephen" signing out.
Cross?? Oh yes with him (57 how DARE you.) and life. I could write paragraphs on my crossness. I know that we all have to go on when your soulmate dies but it is not easy.
Like you Eve I hope I haven't upset anyone Love from Gill xxx
I hate mm I wish Keith and Sue all the strength they need to have in the coming weeks Gill xxxx
Dear Tanya
I am so sorry for the grief and pain you are feeling. I am also thankful that your dad's end was peaceful, pain free and you were with him.
Stay in touch if you would like support. No doubt you will be very busy over the next few days but we will be here when you need a few words of sympathy and encouragement.
Love from Gill xx
Thanks Tom
Yes to be dead 2 months after the photos were taken is unbelievable. But my garden is still amazing and a tribute to Stephen's skill, ability and vision. I am lucky to have so many reminders of what he achieved. House transformed, garden pretty damn good, 2 naughty little Westies (the jury is still out on that:-) love them really and have no idea what I would do without them.
But the greatest thing he left me was a whole life of wonderful memories.
Take care
Love from Gill
Hi Everybody
Just to share some other memories I found in that camera. On a couple of the other photos on the memory stick more of the garden is showing behind Stephen.
For 5 years after moving in here we concentrated on making the house "habitable" Ok we had running water, a smelly working loo, and windows, although we couldn't see out of the kitchen window for the caked on grease. (I pressed so hard on the stanley blade to get the grease off, that the back of the blade sliced my thumb open)
The stairs stunk of animal urine, and out the back there was a hundred foot piece of ground covered in waist high weeds, an old, dumped, rusting car and numerous amounts of half buried rubbish (including a bedstead!)
Daughter, Donna, who must have been about 12 or 13 at the time wailed that she wanted to go home and Stephen promised that he would make it look nice. Her brother, who is 9 years younger couldn't give a hoot. It was odd to think that a couple and 3 young children had lived in this place for @ 5 years before we moved in.
Around 1987 the house was a great deal better. It is an ordinary, 3 bed, double fronted semi in the London borough of Bromley Kent, but by giving it some TLC, knocking down a great deal of the back wall in the kitchen (boy thick polythene does [u]not[/u] keep out the draughts) and building a large, light, airy extension/conservatory off the kitchen. Insulating all the outside walls, connecting central heating and installing a modern combi boiler (no he didn't do all of that he did the grunt work for his sub contracted electrician and plumber but the building stuff was all his own work.)
Strange to think that Stephen lifted that great big metal beam thingy in the kitchen with just one other guy when he knocked down so much of the back kitchen wall. Is it a JCB? JSB?
In about 1987. Stephen and I started thinking about the garden. All we had done to the garden was strim it down regularly. Red thumbs were more us than green fingers, but Stephen could build! I found a pull out article in one of the Sundays by Susan Hampshire and Roddy Llewelyn (sp?)
It showed a pattern for a "low maintenance garden" smaller than ours but adaptable. We plotted out our own version on graph paper and got started. We divided the garden in half. The half nearest the house was mainly paved with an 8 foot wide, formal raised fish pond. We planted shrubs in each "corner" of that half.
I dread to think what we spent on fish for that pond. Golden Orfe – died. Shubumkins – died. Skeleton somethings Orfe maybe – died – bottom feeding pond Tench to clean up wasted fish food – died. Lots of other things that were supposed to thrive. Not for us. We had the pump. we had the right plants, the right (very expensive) pond liner. Even an ornamental fountain, everything except fish. We gave up and bought goldfish. Boy oh Boy have they grown to a size. Yes they die eventually but I could not even start to work out how old some of them are.
The kids used to dangle their feet in the pond and let the fish nibble them YUCK!. Unfortunately a Heron started visiting us for his breakfast so Stephen put a galvanised steel mesh cover over the whole thing with a hinged pull up flap to get to the pond itself.
After that he started on the front garden. It is only about a car and a half long. He paved quite a bit of it to park a car, laid some turf, built a front wall and put in black iron gates. He built a not wide but long garage/utility room on the side of the house. Never used for cars but shelved out with cases and cases of tools, a cement mixer etc. etc. Kitchen sink and drainer, a stretch of kitchen worktop with cupboards and drawers under. That man could build! He plumbed in the washing machine and parked the dryer freezer, etc. in there all connected to a separate fuse box (electrician did that).
All of this is probably very boring, but such lovely memories for me and lots of smiles. I suppose that the sniffle comes when I look at some of the other pictures.
In the back half of the garden Stephen put in a hidden wild life pond, a shed hidden by trellis, decking on which there is a hand built picnic bench with attached benches either side, a concrete trough with a dribble spout attached to a concrete mask that goes into a flower trough, a pebble fountain constructed with mill stones and ornamental pebbles and Stephen's orchard. Be impressed [b]NOT[/b] 4 dwarf fruit trees yielded 2 peaches (one had maggots) a couple of plumbs (they were nice)and 2 tiny sour apples I think there was a cherry tree. That never gave anything.
The few times there was a piece of fruit we would cut it in half, share it and savour it!!
In these photos he is happily working in the garden, not doing what he could before but doing a bit. The big sniffle is that in some of my photos in the background you can see the blossom on the trees in his "orchard". Down here we see that blossom in late May/early June.
How could he possibly be dead by the 11th of September.
Love from Gill xx
I am glad that your dad is comfortable and not in pain. I think that, apart from willing our loved ones to get better and not leave us, a peaceful and pain free end is something we all hope for.
Do keep in touch. Nobody on here can change what is to be but people can give you support,heartfelt sympathy and kindness
Gill xx
I had the photo printed off at a camera shop. They printed off a 5 x 7 and framed it. It is "very Stephen" kind eyes, dog lover, calm personality and "sticky out ears" . He was never vain but I know he would have said "I am sure my ears are getting bigger. Trust you to get the sun shining through them to make them look even worse :)"
Gill xx
I have missed so many posts on here since Stephen died that I did not register that Slim was unwell. There is so little I can say I can only send you kind thoughts and love.
Gill xx
