A Watershed Moment

This weekend was our 33rd wedding anniversary. Since Evie died, we have never ‘celebrated’ our anniversary in any way because it just felt wrong to do so without her there to share it with us. Having fun just seemed wrong, disloyal. Moreover, spending money on luxuries made us feel guilty because the only reason we could afford it was because she wasn’t here.

Over the last couple of months, we have been trying to get out more, visiting a National Trust property each Sunday, armed with the camera, to focus (sorry, lousy pun) on something else and be creative for a while. Taking photos has proven to be really relaxing for me as I have to concentrate on what i am doing for a while, yet it doesn’t intrude on the grief. Evie loved taking pictures too. It brings me closer to her again.

This weekend, as we had exhausted all of our local NT properties, we decided to go away a bit further and stay the night. Plan A was to book a Premier Inn or Travelodge, but we wanted to eat on site and have a decent meal so we booked a nice pub with rooms. The meal was beautiful and in a moment of weakness, I ordered an eye-wateringly expensive bottle of champagne, not to ‘celebrate’, but simply because I haven’t drunk Krug (the Dom Perignon I ordered had sold out) in a very long time and wanted to try it again. The food, service and champagne were all lovely and for the first time, we didn’t feel overwhelmed by guilt. We talked about Evie, the grief, the loss, us. The next morning, we had an enormous cooked breakfast and walked around Basildon Park and took photos.

It was the first time in over 2 1/2 years that we had gone out for a blow out meal. The bill was enormous but we didn’t care. We had figured out that we deserved the relaxing time. The chance to be together and walk, talk, hold hands and enjoy ourselves. Enjoy. A word we hadn’t considered for a very long time. We smiled a lot. We talked about how around 3pm, when we ended up at a Riverside pub on the Thames having a drink and ice creams, that Evie would have wanted steak and chips and that we would have let her have it because we knew that she would have appreciated it and eaten it all. Medium rare, plenty of blood of course. For the first time in a very long time, we smiled when we talked about her rather than cried.

It was a true watershed moment.