Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

“Time passes. Listen. Time passes.”
– Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Juliet died two years ago today.

Today I and the Long-Haired Pixies had lunch in Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Oxford, very pleasant. This time last year, the LHPs and myself were in New York, followed by Washington. Holiday last year, lunch this year – Juliet would have approved. I changed my Facebook profile photo at midnight – see below – and will change it back again tonight. J wouldn’t have been so keen on that, but hey.

S & J at Waddesdon Manor, April 2006

What else has happened in a year?

In the late autumn I split up with my new partner of 14 months and joined a running club (the two facts are not unconnected). It was a very miserable Christmas and New Year. I got into the concept of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and touched on Mindfulness, and I’m a better person for both.

I did lots of dating – and I mean lots – and many girlfriends came and went, but not yet The One. What was it I read the other day? “If you were happy with the wrong one, think how happy you’ll be when the right one comes along“. That’s a reference to the Ex, not J of course.

I kept up with culture, mostly in Oxford, including Dylan Thomas (Under Milk Wood), but also Shakespeare and Moliere! I finally got to the end of “Troubles” by JG Farrell, recommended to me by my Mum, on account of the final beautiful paragraph. Which I shall quote here:

“As it turned out, this lady of white marble was the only bride the Major succeeded in bringing back with him from Ireland in that year of 1921. But he was still troubled by thoughts of Sarah. His love for her perched inside him, motionless, like a sick bird. For many weeks he continued to think about her painfully. And then one day, without warning, the bird left its perch inside him and flew away into the outer darkness and he was at peace. Yet even many years later he would sometimes think of her. And once or twice he thought he glimpsed her in the street.”

Earlier this year I went on holiday by myself for the first time (didn’t like it), to the Lake District (loved it). Lots of hill-walking and some running.

Lucy finished her second year of university, Alice her final year of school. Where are the years going?? Alice and I visited Lincoln, Bournemouth and Kent university open days, with the favoured choices being in that order. She turned 18 a few days after my last blog post.

I had my eyes lasered and now have 20:20 medium and long distance vision but with the downside of having to fumble for reading glasses to read labels on cooking ingredients. Fortunately I don’t do much cooking. I did buy a posh, expensive skillet pan, to the derision of the LHPs, but all I’ve cooked in it have been scrambled eggs.

I bought a ukelele but found it harder than I anticipated, perhaps because I want to hold it left-handed, like Paul McCartney. The musical resemblance stops there. I will have to keep trying.

After having a clean driving licence for many, many years, I got three speeding tickets in quick succession, so am now on the maximum nine points. And driving around with the cruise control locked on to the speed limit, which is boring but necessary.

My sister had a breast cancer scare, but cross fingers, looks like she will be OK. She was detected in time. Juliet wasn’t. That’s the difference. In true Hodkin family tradition, Rebecca blogged about it, here.

I also did lots of running, not very good at it, but the distances have steadily increased and the times slowly reduced. I ran my first half-marathon and have two more booked, including the BUPA Great North Run in September. You can sponsor me here – it’s for the NSPCC rather than a cancer charity, as I won the entry place via a Facebook competition! and first direct bank will match £400 if I raise that on behalf of the NSPCC. A worthy cause anyway. And, yes, I suppose I will do a marathon, at age 50. So from November onwards.

I volunteered to be a marshal at the Katharine House Hospice Midnight Walk in June, which was dull but worthy. And met the founder, Neil Gadsby again. I told him that I’d be one of his staff in September, for I volunteered, was interviewed and have been accepted as a voluntary bereavement counsellor working there from the autumn onwards. That may help me regain some of the fulfilment that I’ve lost at work over the last three to four years.

Just a few days ago I revisited the flats that J and I first moved into and then purchased, in Crystal Palace, in 1987-8 or thereabouts. A bit upsetting, but interesting at the same time. Seemed a million years ago, another lifetime.

Dad, S and J at 1B Cintra Park 2 July 1988

25 years and a month later. Well the fence and garden are in better shape anyway.

Myself and the LHPs are planning a Garden Party in mid-August, to mark what would have been our silver wedding anniversary (20th August 1988). Any excuse for a party. I’m hoping it will be a re-run of the funeral wake, with happier overtones. As before, the garden is being made over (actually “dug over”) by my regular gardener, Mr. Trim – I guess he was born to do that job. Shopping for plants on Friday – that will be expensive. But it will probably help the value of the house slightly. For that is in the back of my mind for spring 2014 – sell up and move on. From the autumn it will just be me (and two guinea-pigs) in a house that once held a family of four.  Downsizing to somewhere in Oxford is my thought. It’s being frowned upon by certain close family members but I’m afraid it’s my life, and we only have one of them.

Perhaps I’ll post some pictures of the party in late August. Here’s some from a party we had in 2008 to celebrate Margaret’s 70th birthday:

Team Party 17 August 2008

Happy Family

Juliet is wearing the black pearls I bought her from Mauritius the previous year. I notice and crave little details like that these days. For example… a few weeks ago, Margaret arranged for an artist friend to visit my house. She is to paint a portrait of Juliet. Not my thing, but if J’s parents want it that’s fine. Anyway, the artist needed to see some photos, so we went through the hundreds on the digital photo frame that I gave Richard & Margaret for Christmas. To my surprise it didn’t take long before I was in tears. There was a story behind every single photo – what she was wearing, why we were there, what else we did that day. All… not lost, but history now. Time passes.

Please don’t forget to sponsor me: http://www.justgiving.com/Simon-Hodkin  – Thanks.

She would have been 50 today

Happy Birthday Juliet.
It was only a few days ago that I was shocked to realize that when I first met Juliet she was 19 – which is younger than my eldest daughter is now.

So I think this is the final update for the blog, it has served its purpose. I’m actually much more reticent about updating it nowadays; in the summer of 2011, nothing else mattered except telling the world how I felt. And today is maybe the last anniversary – no, there will be others, like we would have been married 25 years this year! how ridiculous is that, that I should be someone who has a Silver wedding anniversary. Except that I didn’t and I haven’t.

I’m going to go back on something I said in a recent post, about this blog being about J, my girls and my family and nothing else. As you may know, I launched straight into a new relationship only weeks after J’s death, and as I have protested many times (why should I feel the need to do that?), I never, ever meant that to happen so quickly. But it was very, very intense, and yes, we were in love for many months. And it was the perfect counter to my grief – as my GP said recently, “being in love is better than any pills I can give you”. However – the speed of it didn’t allow me to grieve properly, even though I did plenty of that. Perhaps mourn is a better word. And in the end, my new partner, although very understanding, wanted me to move on and love her more completely than I was able to do. So she finished with me at the end of November, after fourteen months together. And for me it was like being bereaved again – not the same as, obviously, but a very unpleasant time to go through once more. Hence the tablets. And lots and lots of mixed emotions.

To banish the blues, I’ve dramatically increased my running – it’s the feel-good endorphins. On Christmas Day morning I ran ten miles (16.2km) for the first time.
The girls were glad to get me out of the kitchen so they could prepare Xmas lunch. And today, I completed a long-held ambition: to run the ten miles from Banbury Cross to our village. My iPhone screenshot is alongside. There were lots of long hills, but it was pretty straightforwards. It only occurred to me a few days ago that it would be a fitting tribute to Juliet. And now it’s done.

After dropping me off in Banbury, unbeknown to me, Lucy went on to Oxford, to visit the place where we scattered J’s ashes. She was surprised to find that Richard and Margaret (Juliet’s parents) had already been there that day and left their own message with a flower:

The flower was one that my mum (Pam) had sent to mark J’s birthday. So we’ve all marked Juliet’s birthday on our own ways. One of the things J and I had planned to do this year (our 50th birthdays and our 25-year wedding anniversary) was go to Australia for a third time. Business class I think, and visiting Sydney again, but also Melbourne and the wine regions of the south-east. I doubt I’ll ever go back there now.

Let me return to the last entry I made in this blog, other than the WordPress stats update, which are not as impressive as the ones for the end of 2011 obviously. It was June of last year and the anniversary of J’s death was approaching. Well as it happened myself and the girls were in New York on holiday at the time, which in retrospect was a good place to be, certainly it was doing something that J herself would have liked and approved of. At the actual anniversary I was alone in my hotel room, I had taken some of her final letters with me, and I simply re-read them and thought about her. Then got on with our holiday.

Also in June, a couple of my pals decided to do a cycle ride, John O’Groats to Lands’ End, or JOGLE as it’s known. It became JOGLE for Juliet. The website our neighbours setup seems to have gone offline but you can read the three separate news items on our village website here. Try searching for “JOGLE” on the page. Or just read the page in its entirety of flower shows and allotment dramas… Thanks to Ian, Richard, Scot, Emma, Will and Lynne for making it happen. We raised over £1500 for Macmillan Cancer Support and it was great fun – I was one of the support drivers in the big white van. The team photo above shows us in the car park at Gretna Green.

For Christmas I bought Richard & Margaret a digital photo frame and pre-filled it with about 450 photos all featuring Juliet. I was pleased to discover many that I’d forgotten about but Richard said that there were many that he’d never seen at all – one of the perils of digital media and large collections of images. On the left is J at Bressingham, Norfolk, 10 August 2007.

Here’s a couple of family ones, taken at my Mum’s house in North Wales on 28 October 2007:

Yes she has her eyes closed in the first one – she was always doing that! Even when there wasn’t a camera flash going off.

On the left is a out-of-focus one, not too bad when seen in reduced size here. J is with her mum and dad. I forget what a good-looking woman she was, well I don’t, but I am reminded of that fact. Good-looking to me anyway. And a typically stylish necklace, which I don’t recognize, but we may have it among her things.

Here she is looking happy on a nice day out at some local gardens in Adderbury,
2nd July 2006:

And back to 2005 now, a visit to see my brother Carl, then living in Tonbridge, 14th May:

And this close-up, below, taken while waiting for a taxi to take us off to the airport for our second visit to Australia, 6th August 2005. One of the simple discoveries I’ve made with high-resolution modern digital photos is that if you zoom and and crop the subject (i.e. the person), you end up with a portrait very different to the original photo. As my Dad once said: “always take pictures of People. That’s what makes photos interesting”. I remembered that as I viewed literally hundreds of holiday pictures of interesting sights, animals at the zoo and suchlike. None of which anyone has any interest in seeing again. But a photo of your wife sitting in a reception area waiting for a taxi… Strange isn’t it?

Richard won’t appreciate my including this – but it is him with his firstborn child and she looks so happy, so I’m including it. Christmas Eve 2005. Sorry, I’m again going to marvel at how attractive and yet so familiar she looks.

Right back to January 2004 now, and Alice’s 9th birthday party. Juliet loved doing these, it was a mixture of her creativity and her love of children. She was so good at them. I often used to say she should have done it professionally. Look at the joy in her face.

The next one below is J being Mum at one of Lucy’s skipping events at Loughborough University, 16 May 2004. I have to admit, the reason I included this one is that I distinctly remember showing a work colleague the picture and his instinctive man’s reaction was “Phwoaar!” before realizing it was my wife.

Is it appropriate to say how sexy she looks in this one below? It was taken at CenterParcs in the Lake District, 29 August 2004. That would make her 41 years old.

This one is of her in a white top, in our garden in Bodicote near Banbury, 4th May 2003. I’m struck by the fact that she rarely wore white, probably because she was self-conscious about her height and the size of her chest. I didn’t have a problem with either.

On holiday in Dorset, 2nd August 2003. This is on top of a little hill near the village of Symondsbury, outside Bridport. Juliet always had a hang-up about her lack of chin definition – I didn’t notice it any more, I just saw all her other good features instead.

Having complained about digital pictures being squirreled away – thank goodness for the digital time & date-stamping the photo provides. I wouldn’t have a clue when or where this next photo was taken, but the computer and my filing system says it was 8th November 2003, at Susannah’s 18th birthday party (she was one of the bridesmaids at our wedding).

OK, she doesn’t look that happy, but she does look glam again.

And sorry, another “phwoar!” one again. What’s the matter with me? maybe nothing. I just fancied my wife. That can’t be wrong. Christmas Day 2003.

I think that will have to do. It’s been extraordinarily enjoyable looking through these photos and putting them up. I could have selected many, many more. I’ve spent so long updating this blog that I’m actually now rather hungry. It’s almost 9pm and I haven’t had any dinner. So I’d better stop. Juliet would have appreciated the irony. I do miss her.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,200 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 10 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Approaching anniversaries

It’s a year to the day that Juliet entered the hospice. Here’s an extract from an email I wrote that evening:

“Juliet was admitted to the local hospice this afternoon, a relief for us all.
She had a long talk & examination from their own doctor and one of the nurses.
It’s likely she’ll be in there for at least five days, to give them time to sort out her pain management, something we’ve failed to do.
They have terrific facilities and a nurse to patient ratio of 2:1. ”

I did genuinely did think it would only be a temporary measure, but in retrospect, how naive I was. Although the staff did indeed sort out the pain management effectively, she went downhill pretty swiftly from then on, lasting just over six weeks. I started this blog two and half weeks into that time.

There are lots of anniversaries I could recall, but haven’t done so, the date of her first admission into hospital, her treatment dates and so on. I do have a large folder of all the medical records, letters and so on, if I need them. But it’s a sad read – which is how I describe this blog on my Twitter profile. Better to recall the happy days.

J in Marlow May 2009

J and her tree, April 2010, a month after its planting

The next time I will update this blog will probably be on or after the anniversary of her death, 7 August. I did read a useful post somewhere that said words to the effect of: “although it’s just another day… it isn’t. Accept that you will feel bad and deal with it.” So I’ve booked the day off work and vaguely plan to spend the day doing something that J would have liked, perhaps with her parents if they are willing. It might be something as mundane as lunch and a garden centre. Don’t know yet. But it’s only six weeks away.

For those that are curious – I am happier these days, certainly more so than say at the beginning of this year. The new relationship is still going strong after many months, even though there have been many rocky moments. That’s as much information as I’ll give since this blog is about me, Juliet and our family, and no-one else.

J and S at Scarborough, 1 August 2008

At Nuneham Courtenay Arboretum, 1st Nov 2009

J and her dad, 17 August 2008, at our garden party to celebrate Margaret’s 70th birthday

Party girl, NYE 31 Dec 2008

J and S Boxing Day 2009

J and Margaret Boxing Day 2009

J off to the Xmas sales, 27 Dec 2009

A bit of admin and our Marlow stay

This is just a bit of admin to let a blog search engine find this blog. Seems a shame to have to write it as a post, but there we are. So I’ll include a photo of J. The only one I have on my laptop which I haven’t already used is this one, taken in Marlow, Bucks.

Juliet in Marlow

We had a lovely weekend there in May 2009, shortly after her initial emergency surgery. She looks a bit tired and drawn (I don’t think she would have appreciated “haggard”!). We stayed in a famous, posh and expensive hotel called The Compleat Angler. I knew it was posh when I asked for a dry martini and they asked me what kind of olive I would like in it.

Hotel

Hotel, river and bridge

Hotel at dusk

View from hotel at dusk, with strange flying insects

River Thames

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a photo of us together, 23rd May 2009. Almost three years ago. There was much worse to come, but after the initial shock of J’s diagnosis and her hospital stay, this weekend was and is a lovely memory.

J and S

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Six months on

And so six months have passed.

I started this blog about a month before Juliet died and I’m more and more inclined to bring it to a close, now it has fulfilled its purpose. I probably won’t ever close it completely – how do I do that anyway? – but just put it into a state of suspended prose.

It’s worth reminding myself (author’s none-to-subtle device for reminding you, the reader) why I set this blog up:

1. To inform family and friends of Juliet’s condition. In the early days, it did that perfectly, it saved me a lot of time on the phone repeating the same information, and saved a lot of people the agony of wanting to know but not wanting to intrude.
2. Then it became my therapy, my unburdening, a cathartic way to get some of the hurt out of me and enjoy celebrating Juliet’s life through old photos.
3. Lastly, I vaguely hoped that it might help others in a similar, horrible position. I don’t think I’ve mentioned too much of that, so I thought I might jot down a few pieces of wisdom here.

So – if you are with someone who is dying, or has a terminal illness…

Start preparing, as soon as you can. You never know when the disease might suddenly and viciously increase its effects. We were lucky (that’s not meant to be ironic). We had many months to prepare. So what should you do?

Write letters to each other, while the dying person (I’ll call her the “patient”) can still read and understand. Even better, talk to each other about why you became a couple. This isn’t something that you can just launch into over the washing up, or at bedtime, so go for a long walk or drive, or just sit in a quiet sunny room, whatever. Look at your old photos and talk about them, and the memories they invoke and the things that aren’t in the photos. We did that; I would have liked to have looked much more at the photos but we had to live for the moment as well. In the later weeks, when Juliet had trouble in expressing herself clearly, we both found this terribly upsetting, but we had had our discussions previously.

Write individual wills, it’s easy on the internet or through a kit, if your affairs are simple. Set a deadline for doing it, including getting a couple of friends or neighbours to witness and sign it. It’s a bit awkward (for them), but do it, it’s too important not to. The probate process was distressing and difficult enough even with J’s will in place.

Prepare for the funeral. Again, it is difficult to find the right time to do this. I used to look through books of readings & poems in bed on a Saturday morning with a cup of tea, until it got too upsetting, as it did for several weeks. Make some notes about what the patient does and doesn’t want – readings, songs, things to say, things to avoid. You don’t have to plan the fine detail. We did this preparation, and I felt better at the funeral that I was respecting her wishes.

Plan some memorials. These might be just the funeral itself, or more elaborate forms, it’s a matter of personal choice. Making the various memorials to J become reality gave me a strong sense of purpose – the planting of Juliet’s tree we did while she was still alive, then there was her rose, the music books at the hospice, newspaper obituaries, the plaque at the school and the newspaper article about the plaque. But be prepared for a big hole in your life when all these targets are met (ask me how I know).

Get in touch with your old friends. Before the funeral. Before the patient dies. For example, it was pretty gutting to finally track down one of J’s old flatmates and find that not only was she living less than twenty miles away from us, but also that a couple of our last trips out had been to locations either side of her village.

Here’s a couple of photos from one of those trips, near Brill Windmill in Oxfordshire. It was one of the first times I took J out in the wheelchair, 10th April 2011. J took the photo of me. I sort of like and dislike my photo – although it’s currently my Facebook banner photo. The fence stretches away into the blue sky and oblivion. Make up your own metaphor.
You can see something in my face – stress? pain? I was probably thinking “It wasn’t meant to be like this”. Sorry, a self-pitying moment. I deserve a few.

Juliet enjoying the view

Somewhat stressed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And after the death? The bereavement counsellors at the hospice knew what they were doing. They don’t contact the bereaved until 6-8 weeks after the death. Because, frankly, there isn’t anything they can say to take away the grief. You just have to go through it.

I read an interesting study called the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, which quantifies a stressful life event with a score. Don’t go to the link just yet. So:

• Had a bad Christmas? That’s a 12.
• Trouble at work? 20 to 23.
• Child leaving home? – hello, that’s just happened to me as well – pah, a mere 29.
• Sex and pregnancy only get to 40.
• Sacked from your job (that happened to me once): 47.
• Getting married: 50. (Eh?)
• Separation or divorce gets you somewhere between 65 and 73.
• Finally we get to the death of a spouse and the score leaps to the big 100.

There’s nothing else listed after that. It is literally the most stressful event you may ever face. No wonder my concentration at work fell off a cliff. I was clued-up enough not to take any silly decisions about work, like giving it all up. But I still haven’t ruled that out.

I’ve been very slowly removing some of J’s presence from the house – clothes, sewing machine, shoes, coats, her jewellery on the dressing table etc. This is extremely difficult, but the reality is that it is no longer “her” house, nor “our” house but “my” house. That said, it is still the family home for me and my two girls, when Lucy is home from university, and I can’t change it too much. So in fact I haven’t yet got round to removing any of J’s coats, shoes or underwear. It’s going to be a long process.

Now a thorny one. New relationships. Don’t go out looking for someone new too soon. I’m thinking six months at least, but that is coincidentally today, so treat that with a pinch of salt. And as some readers will know, I met someone new very soon after J’s death and we’ve been together several months now, and it’s great and it has really, really helped me through many of the dark days. So I’m uncomfortably aware that this paragraph is completely contradictory. You know what, you’re  going to have to take your own counsel on this one. Don’t listen to jelly-brain in this area.

Right, some other stuff. Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries will be horrible, and they are and they were, but I’m told they get better once you’ve been through one of each. Today in fact wasn’t too bad, I was very busy at work in London. A couple of days ago, on Sunday, the six-month anniversary in weeks, if you follow me, that was worse.

I made my peace with the so-called friend who failed to contact me for months after J’s death. He eventually called me and the conversation went something like this (his part is played by an actor named Jack):

“Hi Simon, how are things, it’s been a while”.
“Yes, Jack, it has been a while. Do you know how long a while?”
“Er…no?”
“It will have been at least five months tomorrow. How do I know that? Because I haven’t heard from you since Juliet died, in all that time, and she died five months tomorrow. No card, no call, you didn’t respond to the funeral invitation, nothing.”

I interrupted his stuttered excuses and said “Jack, you got it wrong. Really wrong. You really screwed up”. And more in similar vein. I didn’t rub his nose in it for too long, I said I wasn’t going to lose a friend over it and that we’d have a beer sometime. We haven’t yet, but I expect we will.

So – if someone you know is dying, or has had bad news, get in touch with them, call them, email, write, send them a card, even Twitter if that’s what it takes. But don’t ignore them. This is the time they need you.

If this blogging software had a Rambling Alert function it would be flashing red by now. So I will draw this post to a close.

Six months on, life is actually getting better.

• I’ve a new friend who makes me happy.
  (The term “girlfriend” seems ridiculous at my age, “partner” is too formal and committed and “companion” makes her sound like a Dr.Who girl).
• I’ve just come back from a week in the US on business, on a new and exciting project.  So I may yet get my work mojo back again.
• Film nights and pub nights with my pals still occur, if on an irregular, but very pleasant basis. Beer and talking b******s.
• I’ve done my winter evening class on Orwell and re-discovered a love of reading, maybe even as grand as a love of literature.
• I’ve got some weekend breaks booked, and thoughts about a summer trip to the US with the girls to visit my brother and his wife.
• There’s a new company car on the way, to replace the very-capable and pleasant Volvo estate. (I only got the Volvo for one reason – because it could fit a wheelchair. So I won’t really regret its departure).
• I’m keeping my running up and my alcohol intake down, both of which I promised Juliet. The former is doing better than the latter, but not too bad.
• My drive towards learning more cooking skills and watching more classic and contemporary films would probably appear on a school report as “Shows some progress” – if the teacher was being kind. But there’s time yet.
• We’ve got a cleaner in to help with the housework.
• The winter isn’t over yet, but in another three weeks it will be March.
  Well, actually it won’t, because we are in a leap year. I can get through Feb 29th.

Did you know that John Dryden “To die is landing on some distant shore” was the first official Poet Laureate?

Sorry this has been a text-heavy post. Here’s a photo of Juliet with her beloved Sydney Opera House, taken on our second visit to Australia, 25th August 2005.

She looks happy - she was

Clearing clothes

Today I started upon a task I’d not been looking forward to: clearing out Juliet’s clothes. Previously I’d cleared out just a single drawer in her bedside cupboard, and that was upsetting enough. In recent days I’ve resolved to start afresh with what used to be “our” room (the bedroom) and is now of course “my” sole room. I’m going to redecorate it – at least slap a coat of white or cream paint on it, change the pictures – and remove J’s dressing table.

J's dressing table

This was not something I ever used anyway, and since her death almost exactly five months ago, I’ve not done anything different. In fact I’ve treated it literally as part of the furniture, it’s not something I use or really notice any more. So it’s dead space – an unfortunate phrase. I’ve recently realised that I could put a bookcase there and relieve the overflowing shelves in my study. But I’ll only do this when the rest of the room is sorted, which will give me an incentive to do that.

On and in the dressing table is the usual assortment of women’s stuff: a ton of make-up (although J didn’t use much). Make-up tools, some of recognisable function and some not. Jewellery of course, nothing of any value, except sentimental. Paper flowers, cards and models made by the girls. Almost every birthday card, Valentine and Mothers Day that I’d ever sent her and many that the girls had made for her. A letter from me to her written on 13 January 1988 (so almost twenty-four years ago), reassuring her that I still wanted to marry her later that year and that I was still her best friend. The tears were already flowing by this point. Lots of Australia souvenirs – postcards, luggage labels, coasters. Tickets for a Kylie Minogue concert and a visit to the V&A museum. Broken hairbrushes, hairclips and nail files.

There was also a piece of paper with lots of pink love heart “post-it” notes attached, each saying “I Love You” and numbered, 1 – 32. This was a romantic gesture by me some years ago. I can’t remember in which house, but basically I posted these post-it notes all over the house – inside the washing machine, airing cupboard, fridge, on the iron, inside drawers, etc. – and over the next few weeks she gradually found them all, unexpectedly, while doing normal household chores. I have a feeling that she never found one or two of them as I forgot where I’d put them all.

Margaret helped me pack up the items and put aside some stuff for the charity shop (not much) and throw some stuff out (not much). And passed me tissues.

Clearing

Then we moved onto J’s wardrobe. It’s not that I need the space, I just don’t want it to become a museum, which nobody visits. We picked out some of the easier wins, a couple of garments that I didn’t recognise and some old dressing-gowns. Lucy vetoed my getting rid of a more recent dressing gown, that was OK, it went back into the cupboard to be considered another time. We packaged up some of her nicer dresses into suit carriers.

There could well be a lion and a witch at the back...

I found my wedding suit!! with a moth hole in the arm and a handkerchief – used! urghh!! – in the trouser pocket. The suit I saved, as Juliet had, the handkerchief went in the bin (I haven’t used them for years). There was an old pink sweatshirt that I had bought J from Rochester, Minnesota back in 1997 and which she used to do house painting in. So Margaret cut out the logo for me and we just kept that.

We didn’t get onto the more recent clothes, nor her “naughty knicker drawer” nor several other drawers, but it’s a start. It took much, much longer than I thought and was very draining – crying takes it out of you. We’ll have another go at it another time. “Tomorrow is another day”, as a late family friend used to say, but it will probably be in several weeks’ time rather than tomorrow.

Clearance progressing

And because these photos are rather depressing let’s finish with a nice portrait of J from a New Year’s Eve party in 2007.

Party girl

Even a ginepig can have a plaque

I actually have lots and lots to write about, since it’s been so long since I’ve written, other than a couple of very recent posts. Like how Christmas was for us all, contacting some of her college friends, and how we are all getting on, almost five months later. But that will have to wait for another future post. This update is all about her memorial plaque that we unveiled at her former school, The Grange, in Banbury. I’d been waiting for today for quite a long time, since September in fact.

Plaque and sea mural

The Grange is not in fact where she last taught; that was as a higher-level teaching assistant in Middle Barton, after the bureaucracy of modern teaching had finally got to her. Nevertheless, she was very happy at the Grange, where she taught for eight years, from May 2000 to October 2008. Partly as a job share with other teachers, partly as supply or cover, but she always liked just teaching the children, she wasn’t interested in career progression.

Plaque

Today had dawned with very strong winds – gales – and lashing rain. It brightened up a little by midday and by the time myself, Lucy, Alice and the teachers at the Grange assembled outside, the sky was turning blue, the wind had dropped and it was bright, if a bit chilly. The caretaker had put the plaque up this morning and I said a few words. I deliberately hadn’t prepared anything, just thought about what I wanted to say while driving there. When you speak from the heart, you don’t need to prepare. I talked about how Juliet had always wanted to teach, from an early age, how she had always loved teaching and about the long time she had to prepare for her death. And how we had planted a flowering cherry tree in her name and a rose bush. But we had no memorial with her name on it.

Lucy, Alice and Glyn with one of the murals and the plaque

So we have resolved one of the requests that had always troubled me. It was literally the final thing she wrote in her funeral planning notes, originally dated January 2010, but from the handwriting and spelling, clearly a later addition. It read, verbatim, with spelling mistakes and even an incorrect birthdate:

“Juliet’s tree” in from garden, next to tree as then it can count as a “house name” and it’s harded for them to stop it. Then in the back at the back, we can put
Juliet Hodkin
        1986 – 2011
as even a ginepig can have one!

Family studio portrait 9 January 2010

Juliet’s rose

Planted a rose for Juliet today, on what would have been her 49th birthday.  It’s a variety called “Sweet Juliet“, ordered by her godmother Janet back in August. She and Margaret also have examples of this rose, so between us hopefully we will produce something worthy of the name. I think my mum has also ordered one.

Planted. Cross (green) fingers...

"Sweet Juliet" rose

Very reliable...

2011 in review

Today – 2nd January 2012 –  would have been Juliet’s 49th birthday. The remainder of this post below is an automated summary of 2011’s blog activity sent to me by WordPress, the blogging software I use.  Juliet would have been horrified at the publicity, figures and statistics – but it will serve as a memorial to her until tomorrow’s post. The reference to her beloved Sydney Opera House is a coincidence it seems.

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.