How can it possibly be 11 years since Seth died? but it is, and I have lived those eleven years every day with the trauma distress and injustice of his early death.
It would have been really easy to drop into deep sorrow, unmitigated pity but I did not take that route I decided that I would share our experience to hopefully help others. From those actions came a dynamic growth which has taught me so much and which has shaped the person that I am today.
None of this was easy but life is not easy it is wonderful.
I had the privilege of sixteen wonderful years with Seth but then he and all the love was gone in a blink of an eye in just 33 days.
I knew that when Seth died his death would teach me much about life and it did, I learned so much from his death, things like that I wasn’t going to be labelled a widow; I wasn’t going to allow people to look at me with sad eyes and that slight tilt of the head and think poor woman her husband died in 33 days.
No, I was going to take a different route and own my grief.
This time last year I was in the midst of many activities that marked the 10th anniversary of Seth death and on this day last year in with the support of Marie Curie and Pancreatic Cancer UK we had a wonderful conference about creativity at end of life but so much has happened in the last year that that also seems like a distant memory, that too could have been 11 years ago. Time becomes an emotion not a spatial concept when you experience life changing events.
We spend our lives in the constant knowledge that our time on this earth is limited, life is impermanent and as we move through each day, we often do not confront what the meaning of impermanence really is.
But when someone is diagnosed with cancer particularly pancreatic cancer where time is often short and there is no hope of cure, we confront brutally openly and uncompromisingly with the reality of death.
If I could turn the clock back eleven years of course I would wish for a different outcome but in some ways Seth’s death has equipped me for my current challenges and I am eternally grateful for that.
So today on what is always a very sad day I am thankful for the time I spent with Seth, I am thankful for the lessons I learned from his death, and I am thankful to sit here with wonderful memories which are etched into my heart. Memories that no one can take away, no one can share, they are my memories only my memories….
Seth, I will love you with my heart forever.
