The Letter

Dear Sue,

I'm trying my hardest to look after Lily and Louise, to allow them to be who they want to be, to take care of them and provide a nice home, a sense of comfort and somewhere they can rely on and call their own.

It's not easy though babes, it doesn't necessarily come naturally to me though I'm trying to learn fast. I know I need to.

You were amazing, like you were in most things. They loved you yet you could discipline them, they wanted so much from you and yet you managed to make them aware of being grateful for the small things. You watched me flounder with giving in as a dad and were always there to remind me about what I should and shouldn't be doing in that respect. That's why it's hard babes, you're not here to do that any-more, and as difficult as it is being a dad on my own, it feels even more difficult that approaching 3 months on from the last time we sipped tea together, 3 months on from the last time we looked into one another's eyes and said together, "I love you babes," 3 months on from the time you slipped your hand in mine and squeezed it tight, I miss you more than words can say. I miss you, love you and need you like you wouldn't believe. Time is still not kind to me on that front.

You'll be warmed to know though that what gets me through the seconds, minutes and days is our children.

They do well, they get on with their lives and they thrive babes. They miss you dearly too, there is not one day, one moment that is not filled with the memory of their mum, her laughter , her care, her joy,  even her discipline. You have inspired us all, Lily, Lou, me, family and friends.

What has come to pass, what this wonderful, magical , brilliant tribute has become is the realisation of how amazing you were. Don't tell me to stop though, don't trivialise this, for it's the truth.

You cared about so many, adapted to all your friends varying temperments, demanded nothing from anyone but the truth, were self taught, knowledgeable and able and above all, even at the bitterest, dreadful end, brave.

Good god, my beautiful Suze, to keep us from unbelievable pain, to spare us the agony of really knowing, you did this to help me, and for that, that selfless bravery in the face of the most severe adversity, that bravery continues to inspire and help me and more importantly to help our daughters and our friends, all of whom who miss you just as much as Lou, Lily and I  do.

So that's a good thing babes is it not? What better tribute to how amazing you were than to use that brilliance to continue to inspire our daughters, to remind your friends of what is and isn't important and to keep me afloat as I try to survive this grief thing for all our sakes.

Love you babes....

Matty

p.s. Glastonbury this weekend. I know what you're thinking, the last time I went I got pushed in a ditch. We'll remember all the good times though and Mandy, Ben, Hallie, Sam and Lil's will look after me and smile and do it in the way you would want us to. But it's hard babes and it isn't getting any better but something will get us through I'm sure, I hope! Something and nothing in this journey we're on.

Speak again soon but for the moment it can never be overstated, enough repeated or once again reiterated, "I love you babes and living life without you continues to be unbearably difficult but we are trying, we are all trying!"

 

Seasons of Love

There are lots of moments and experiences in my life that I am happy to describe as lovely. I can find lovely in grief and it's, well, lovely! Lovely is warm and positive, it is always welcomed and affects you strangely in much the same way as grief does. Surprised, crying, hopeless and empty for grief; surprised, smiling, laughing and good for lovely.
My girls are lovely on Father's Day. Celebrating me as a dad! They buy me gifts, they take me out and the 'lovely' to cap it all is they tell me 'I'm amazing' and a lovely dad for them. I hope I am ?  I don't really know? But the lovely I describe is part of accepting where I am at the moment. I'm remembering, longing, wishing, craving for that beautiful and lovely Susan to be close to me again. As much as I know that can never be there is a momentary thought that is actually lovely.
I drive at speed down the motorway in her car. I put the roof down and turn the music up. The cloudless sky is above, the wind  rushing around as I tempt myself to break the speed limit hurtling towards the setting, amber sun. In this moment, in this exact moment, Sue and I are in love all over again, laughing and smiling, looking at one another and touching each other's hands. For a brief moment, for more than a second, even minute this was lovely! Me and Sue were together again, for a moment, just a moment and it felt lovely.
5788800 seconds, 96480 minutes, 1608 hours since Sue died! How do you truly measure a life and love together? I count our lovely times together; the laughs, the loves, the children, friends,  the disagreements, the tellings off, the cinema, the theatre, the music, holidays and goings out, the simplicity and complexity of being together. These moments are worth more than the seconds, minutes, days and hours that actually accounted for our life together and that is what is important now for Lily, Louise, family, Mandy, Ben, Hallie, Sam, Jane, Nanny and Pa. The beauty of moments together and taking care of one another through our 'Season of Grief'.
There was this time that we took for granted. It was all of us together living our lives and enjoying one another's company, tales and stories, laughter and advice. It was exactly 5788800 seconds, 96480 minutes, 1608 hours ago that something happened to abruptly end all that and teach us not to take anything, anything for granted and to enjoy and love one another for the now, both us and life itself. It's summer now but next it will be Autumn and so on and so forth. Sun will burn and then leaves will fall but facts will never ever change. We won't forget but we carry on always searching now for these lovely moments. I know that Sue would want that for us all, find those lovely moments and babes we found it today in our beautiful, amazing daughters. They looked after me today on Father's Day, they look after me for all days as I try to do to them. I'm proud of them and they would make you proud. That's a lovely thing.

Dying to Know : Belief

Dying to Know : Belief: It's impossible to know what the future holds for grief and bereavement but I know it is better to talk about it and to tell someone how...

Belief

It's impossible to know what the future holds for grief and bereavement but I know it is better to talk about it and to tell someone how you feel. Being alone and inside your head is an inevitability though that I have come to accept, occasionally I want it! Being alone gives you time to seek something quiet, it is the time I really think about my Suze and imagine what I know can now never be a reality; her arm around me, her smell, her laugh and her embrace. The embrace bit I really never stop thinking about because it encompasses so many other emotions and feelings; love, compassion, want, hope, safety and comfort. In lonely times these are the virtues you think about and wonder if you'll ever experience again? I think also about my friends and other family, they must also experience the type of loneliness that I describe, different, but still loneliness. Being alone in your thoughts, thinking by yourself of mine, your's, all of our memories and experiences of Suze. As a friend, mum, daughter, sister and wife!

This day is a bright day, a hopeful day. Lily has run a 'Race for Life', in her mum's memory. She would be so proud! I express part of my grief through this blog, Lily has expressed her's through the designs on her running vest. "I miss you mum..", "for Susan, the best mum in the world...", her friend also, running in memory of her grandad and the "beautiful Susan Sheppard", amazing words, amazing deeds from children. What a day really! Bright sunshine, a sea of pink in a park, all there to do something, to make a stand, to remember someone special and to provide hope. I liked seeing Lily smiling with her wonderful teachers, I liked it even more seeing them holding hands. I like'd the messages of love on the runners vests, the effort, warmth and humanity. The runners and non-runners, dogs, children and well wishers The old and young, mums and dads, boyfriends and girlfriends. These are mighty fine things in our world, worth cherishing and believing in. I believed in today and for Lily, Lou and I it was a force to be reckoned with. I'm beginning to see the importance of belief when in grief. 

I met with Suze consultant in the week, to really get some sort of closure on the medical questions that inevitably emerge and fester a bit as time creeps on. My memory of the meeting though was not one that I had expected. Not about treatment and care, drugs and admissions but more about advice. "Try to remember her not at the end, but before all this happened. She was a lively, positive person, in the brief time I knew her she struck me as someone who must have lived her life this way." I hadn't countered on emotional advice, just clinical, so it was thoughtful and as I think now right and correct. So although my grief, and as I'm sure others who knew Suze too, can vary, it is right that I remember, perhaps we remember more her brightness, her fun, like Lily and thousands of others today. Pink and Bling. Shine on babes positively in our memories! Our daughter was beautiful today! Shine on with belief!

http://www.justgiving.com/Matt-Sheppard1

 

The Vision

With this and that, with the thing I'm dealing with, me and on behalf of the girls, you often live in the mind. You have to with grief. You also live in the now of course because you have to do that as well. The phrases I struggle with, "getting on," "getting through it,"  and god do I hate this one, " Are you baring up?" or worse still, " You seem OK." People only mean well. I know!

But what on earth does this mean? OK?

I'm allowed to drive to work am I not? Laugh occasionally, smile, share good times with friends and family? This is called love isn't it? Is this getting on, or is it mere coping? Why shouldn't I be entitled to do this? This is my entitlement. Selfishly! But not for one second, not for a moment do I ever believe I'm any where near ' through it'.. That means it's a tunnel, dark and somewhat nebulous. No answers. If that is what is meant by getting through it, I haven't even begun, can't start the motor, it's broken down in a lay by....But reading these words back I sound angry. I'm not most of the time, but if this is a journey then I have to live in the mind, in the imagination and make believe. In my tunnel there are other people, we fish around with one another shuffling about with batteries to light our way, we make one another laugh as they drop to the floor and get humorously impatient with one another (as Sue and I did)  as we struggle to clip plastic fixings together with cold hands. Bumping one another for fun. Kids kick stones and maybe, maybe we can see light or we shine it nonetheless in the distance and it gives us hope..

There is this great space of nothing now and I can totally give in to its eternal, unanswerable non-end. But this vision thing reminds me that she left a mark that fills this hole, it was her existence. Her being . She was and therefore I have to be now. I am! End of it, grow up.... I don't want to just visit this world and simply open up various doors as a father. That's not being a father. That's a doorkeeper. I want to live in this world and I want my girls to do the same thing. To live, exist and thrive.  That's our expectation our learning entitlement.  

In my mind another vision, they shift constantly. Perfect days; sunshine, Lily and Louise laughing, running and floating, being confident and Suze. Suze still walks in and out of my imagination constantly. She comes into our kitchen as we're eating a meal, smiling. She kisses Lily goodnight in her bed, she walks into friends houses when I'm there, she sits by me in the car up to work.  She always wants to come back to Lily, Louise and I first of all, to check on us. I like it when she comes back to us first. It makes me cry. I think she does it to check I am doing a good job. To reassure me. My vision jolts me and reminds me to do a good job. To be a father, to be that and to also be something else, a mother now! So I wear an apron, I cook,  I wash up, I clean, I hang wet things up. I change the sheets. I think I know what it is to care, I think I know what it is to love! I hope I do!